On top of Argentina’s bestseller list is The Myths of Argentine History, Volume Two . In second place is The Myths of Argentine History, Volume One . Both, of course, are by the same author: Felipe Pigna, a 45-year-old historian.

It is a rare event when two volumes of the same book top the Argentine bestseller list. Nevertheless, the same thing occurred with the first and second volumes of The Argentines , another look at our history by Jorge Lanata, one of Argentina’s best known journalists.

Argentina has been on the front pages of the world’s newspapers, with stories describing an economic and social crisis born of debt default and devaluation, unemployment and widespread poverty. The subplot is inevitably how a Latin American country that once seemed more like Europe developed all the maladies of its Southern neighbors: a state unable to guarantee public health and education; a growing gap between rich and poor; the disappearance of the middle class; and the decline of industrial capacity in favor of producing raw materials.

All of this is undeniable, and yet the most important change in Argentina – one that occurred a few years earlier – went unnoticed.

Argentina had been, since the end of the nineteenth century, the country of the future. Millions of immigrants arrived with great expectations of making a country – and making it their country. The new land offered them the promise of a magnificent tomorrow. Argentina was always at the point of taking off, always at the door of greatness.

In the collective imagination, this idea was expressed in the phrase, “The country that we all deserve.” The immigrants would raise a new generation of doctors, lawyers, and engineers. For the individual, Argentina embodied the dream that one’s children would live better – and their children even better.

This idea of promise and progress was central to Argentines. It was the basis for Argentina, the paradigm for our lives and our way of living. It lasted for nearly a century, until the early 1980’s. Since then, not even campaigning politicians have dared to promise a prosperous future.

Slowly, many parents began to accept the fact that their children would be worse off. The notion of Argentina as a country with infinite promise became a desaparecido , the name given to those who disappeared in the dirty war of the 1970’s.

We lost our organizing principle and no other idea has replaced it. We no longer have a guide, an idea of how to think about our country, how to understand it and how to imagine who we are and who we can become.

Argentina has become a country without direction. It hasn’t been easy living without knowing who we are, and it became even more difficult to live this way as we watched our world crumble.

This absence of animating purpose, of faith in the future, has made us hungry for our past. Faced with the loss of the nation’s central idea and desperately in search of a new one, millions of Argentines have become interested in their history.

These books tell our history in an odd way. To begin with, they reject all academic conventions, such as footnotes, graphics, or judicious explanations in favor of agreeable journalistic narratives pitched to a mass audience. They appeal, above all, to the logic of popular suspicion that perhaps becomes inevitable when a proud nation is suddenly laid low: Pigna, like Lanata, presents a history full of conspiracy, lies, treason, and corruption.

Both books apply to the past the lens that Argentines are accustomed to using when they look at the present: the lens of the press. If these books can be read as developing a new idea of Argentina, it is the idea that there is little to trust, that everything is fraudulent, and that leeriness must be our worldview. This is an interesting view – and perhaps a necessary one – but it is also dangerous.

The process of developing and coming to terms with a new national idea cannot begin and end with a rejection of the very concept. Argentina’s ongoing search is an untold, fascinating story of how we Argentines imagine and define who we want to be in the next decades. In an uncertain age, whoever defines us first, whether a politician, an artist, or an intellectual, will merit a prominent place in our history.