The long, improbable journey to the Conquest of the Incas is an incredible, modern story. While the Inca Empire was expanding along the Pacific coast of South America, the backward Kingdom of Castile and Leon was mired in political intrigue. This is a story of courage, luck, colossal misjudgments and soaring ambition by entrepreneurs who would lead a culture clash ending in the fall of the Inca Empire and the rise of the Spanish Empire that lasted two hundred years due to Inca treasure. All the players sought the same things: independence, security, honor, wealth and glory. Few achieved their goals in any lasting sense but many displayed the indomitable spirit of motivated visionaries. This is their story.
The long, improbable journey to the Conquest of the Incas is an incredible, modern story. While the Inca Empire was expanding along the Pacific coast of South America, the backward Kingdom of Castile and Leon was mired in political intrigue. This is a story of courage, luck, colossal misjudgments and soaring ambition by entrepreneurs who would lead a culture clash ending in the fall of the Inca Empire and the rise of the Spanish Empire that lasted two hundred years due to Inca treasure. Heroic figures such as Queen Isabella, Christopher Columbus, Emperor Charles V, Hernando de Soto, Vasco Nunez de Balboa, and Ponce de Leon come alive as the Castilian kingdom attempts to seize and settle the New world. In doing so, Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almalgro press against all odds to find the mysterious kingdom first called Biru. They encounter a vast, sophisticated empire crafted by iconic leaders named Pachecutec, Topa Inca and Huyana Capac. Succeeding by guile
In 1531, Pizarro led a small but well-trained army along the Pacific coast of the unexplored South America. With less than 200 men, he conquered the Inca Empire, which ruled what is now Peru, establishing Spanish dominion.
'A superb work of narrative history' Antonia Fraser On 25 September 1513, a force of weary Spanish explorers cut through the forests of Panama and were confronted with an ocean: the Mar del Sur, or the Pacific Ocean. Six years later the Spaniards had established the town of Panama as a base from which to explore and exploit this unknown sea. It was the threshold of a vast expansion. From the first small band of Spanish adventurers to enter the mighty Inca empire, to the execution of the last Inca forty years later, The Conquest of the Incas is a story of bloodshed, infamy, rebellion and extermination, told as convincingly as if it happened yesterday. 'It is a delight to praise a book of this quality which combines careful scholarship with sparkling narrative skill' Philip Magnus, Sunday Times 'A superbly vivid history' The Times
Documents the epic conquest of the Inca Empire as well as the decades-long insurgency waged by the Incas against the Conquistadors, in a narrative history that is partially drawn from the storytelling traditions of the Peruvian Amazon Yora people. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.
The acclaimed author of Labyrinth of Ice charts the legendary sixteenth-century adventurer’s death-defying navigation of the Amazon River. In 1541, Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro and his lieutenant Francisco Orellana searched for La Canela, South America’s rumored Land of Cinnamon, and the fabled El Dorado, “the golden man.” Quickly, the enormous expedition of mercenaries, enslaved natives, horses, and hunting dogs were decimated through disease, starvation, and attacks in the jungle. Hopelessly lost in the swampy labyrinth, Pizarro and Orellana made the fateful decision to separate. While Pizarro eventually returned home in rags, Orellana and fifty-seven men continued into the unknown reaches of the mighty Amazon jungle and river. Theirs would be the greater glory. Interweaving historical accounts with newly uncovered details, Levy reconstructs Orellana’s journey as the first European to navigate the world’s largest river. Every twist and turn of the powerful Amazon holds new wonders and the risk of death. Levy gives a long-overdue account of the Amazon’s people—some offering sustenance and guidance, others hostile, subjecting the invaders to gauntlets of unremitting attacks and signs of terrifying rituals. Violent and beautiful, noble and tragic, River of Darkness is riveting history and breathtaking adventure that will sweep readers on a voyage unlike any other. Praise for Buddy Levy and River of Darkness “In River of Darkness, Buddy Levy recounts Orellana’s headlong dash down the Amazon. Like Mr. Levy’s last book, Conquistador, about the conquest of Mexico, River of Darkness presents a fast-moving tale of triumph over seemingly insurmountable odds. . . . Though impromptu, the expedition was one of the most amazing adventures of all time.” —Wall Street Journal “An exciting, well-plotted excursion down the Amazon River with the early Spanish conquistador. . . . [A] richly textured account of the rogue, rebel and visionary whose discovery still resonates today.” —Kirkus Reviews “A rollicking adventure . . . Levy successfully conveys the Amazon’s power and majesty, while shedding light on the futility of humanity’s attempt to tame it.” —The A.V. Club
Since its original publication in 1949, Irving A. Leonard's pioneering Books of the Brave has endured as the classic account of the introduction of literary culture to Spain's New World. Leonard's study documents the works of fiction that accompanied and followed the conquistadores to the Americas and goes on to argue that popular texts influenced these men and shaped the way they thought and wrote about their New World experiences. For the first time in English, this edition combines Leonard's text with a selection of the documents that were his most valuable sources--nine lists of books destined for the Indies. Containing a wealth of information that is sure to spark future study, these lists provide the documentary evidence for what is perhaps Leonard's greatest contribution: his demonstration that royal and inquisitorial prohibitions failed to control the circulation of books and ideas in colonial Spanish America. Rolena Adorno's introduction signals the lasting value of Books of the Brave and brings the reader up to date on developments in cultural-historical studies that have shed light on the role of books in Spanish American colonial culture. Adorno situates Leonard's work at the threshold between older, triumphalist views of Spanish conquest history and more recent perspectives engendered by studies of native American peoples. With its rich descriptions of the book trade in both Spain and America, Books of the Brave has much to offer historians as well as literary critics. Indeed, it is a highly readable and engaging book for anyone interested in the cultural life of the New World. Since its original publication in 1949, Irving A. Leonard's pioneering Books of the Brave has endured as the classic account of the introduction of literary culture to Spain's New World. Leonard's study documents the works of fiction that accompanied and followed the conquistadores to the Americas and goes on to argue that popular texts influenced these men and shaped the way they thought and wrote about their New World experiences. For the first time in English, this edition combines Leonard's text with a selection of the documents that were his most valuable sources--nine lists of books destined for the Indies. Containing a wealth of information that is sure to spark future study, these lists provide the documentary evidence for what is perhaps Leonard's greatest contribution: his demonstration that royal and inquisitorial prohibitions failed to control the circulation of books and ideas in colonial Spanish America. Rolena Adorno's introduction signals the lasting value of Books of the Brave and brings the reader up to date on developments in cultural-historical studies that have shed light on the role of books in Spanish American colonial culture. Adorno situates Leonard's work at the threshold between older, triumphalist views of Spanish conquest history and more recent perspectives engendered by studies of native American peoples. With its rich descriptions of the book trade in both Spain and America, Books of the Brave has much to offer historians as well as literary critics. Indeed, it is a highly readable and engaging book for anyone interested in the cultural life of the New World.
For four hundred years--from the first Spanish assaults against the Arawak people of Hispaniola in the 1490s to the U.S. Army's massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee in the 1890s--the indigenous inhabitants of North and South America endured an unending firestorm of violence. During that time the native population of the Western Hemisphere declined by as many as 100 million people. Indeed, as historian David E. Stannard argues in this stunning new book, the European and white American destruction of the native peoples of the Americas was the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world. Stannard begins with a portrait of the enormous richness and diversity of life in the Americas prior to Columbus's fateful voyage in 1492. He then follows the path of genocide from the Indies to Mexico and Central and South America, then north to Florida, Virginia, and New England, and finally out across the Great Plains and Southwest to California and the North Pacific Coast. Stannard reveals that wherever Europeans or white Americans went, the native people were caught between imported plagues and barbarous atrocities, typically resulting in the annihilation of 95 percent of their populations. What kind of people, he asks, do such horrendous things to others? His highly provocative answer: Christians. Digging deeply into ancient European and Christian attitudes toward sex, race, and war, he finds the cultural ground well prepared by the end of the Middle Ages for the centuries-long genocide campaign that Europeans and their descendants launched--and in places continue to wage--against the New World's original inhabitants. Advancing a thesis that is sure to create much controversy, Stannard contends that the perpetrators of the American Holocaust drew on the same ideological wellspring as did the later architects of the Nazi Holocaust. It is an ideology that remains dangerously alive today, he adds, and one that in recent years has surfaced in American justifications for large-scale military intervention in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. At once sweeping in scope and meticulously detailed, American Holocaust is a work of impassioned scholarship that is certain to ignite intense historical and moral debate.
