Following in the footsteps of the greatest Spanish adventurers, Michael Wood retraces the path of the conquistadors from Amazonia to Lake Titicaca, and from the deserts of North Mexico to the heights of Machu Picchu. As he travels the same routes as Hernan Cortes, Francisco, and Gonzalo Pizarro, Wood describes the dramatic events that accompanied the epic sixteenth-century Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires. He also follows parts of Orellana's extraordinary voyage of discovery down the Amazon and of Cabeza de Vaca's arduous journey across America to the Pacific. Few stories in history match these conquests for sheer drama, endurance, and distances covered, and Wood's gripping narrative brings them fully to life.Wood reconstructs both sides of the conquest, drawing from sources such as Bernal Diaz's eyewitness account, Cortes's own letters, and the Aztec texts recorded not long after the fall of Mexico. Wood's evocative story of his own journey makes a compelling connection with the sixteenth-century world as he relates the present-day customs, rituals, and oral traditions of the people he meets. He offers powerful descriptions of the rivers, mountains, and ruins he encounters on his trip, comparing what he has seen and experienced with the historical record.As well as being one of the pivotal events in history, the Spanish conquest of the Americas was one of the most cruel and devastating. Wood grapples with the moral legacy of the European invasion and with the implications of an episode in history that swept away civilizations, religions, and ways of life. The stories in Conquistadors are not only of conquest, heroism, and greed but of changes in the way we see the world, history and civilization, justice and human rights. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.
Nearly a decade after Spain's conquest of Mexico, the future of Christianity on the American continent was very much in doubt. Confronted with a hostile colonial government and Native Americans wary of conversion, the newly-appointed bishop-elect of...
NOW THE ACCLAIMED HBO SERIES GAME OF THRONESNominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American ReadFrom a master of contemporary fantasy comes the first novel of a landmark series unlike any you’ve eve...
There have been many Mexicos: the country of varied terrain, of Amerindian heritage, of the Spanish Conquest, of the Revolution, and of the modern era of elections and the rule of bankers. Mexico was forged in the fires of successive civilizations, ...
Narrator: Timothy Andres Pabon Published: 11/06/2018
A brand-new special edition recording of the first audiobook in the worldwide bestselling trilogy from Suzanne Collins!
In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying d...
The building of the Panama Canal was one of the greatest engineering feats in human history. A tale of exploration, conquest, money, politics, and medicine, Panama Fever charts the challenges that marked the long, labyrinthine road to the building o...
While Mexicans were hopeful for economic reform following the Mexican revolution, by the 1930s, large numbers of Mexican nationals had already moved north and were living in the United States in one of the twentieth century's most massive movements ...
"I began to daydream about the jungle...."On April 6, 1940, explorer and future World War II spy Theodore Morde (who would one day attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler), anxious about the perilous journey that lay ahead of him, struggled to ...
“Commit yourself to the Virgin Mary, for in her hands is the way into the Darién—and in God’s is the way out.”The Darkest Jungle tells the harrowing story of America’s first ship canal exploration across a narrow p...
Narrator: Scott Brick,Ray Childs Published: 09/03/2003
“Commit yourself to the Virgin Mary, for in her hands is the way into the Darién—and in God’s is the way out.”The Darkest Jungle tells the harrowing story of America’s first ship canal exploration across a narrow p...
Narrator: Scott Brick,Ray Childs Published: 12/30/2003
