stevemcdede's review against another edition
4.0
4 stories. 1st two are exciting. Last two are interesting.
julis's review
adventurous
challenging
informative
fast-paced
4.0
Frankly I should’ve started with this instead of Rivers of Gold. Michael Wood wrote this as a companion piece to his PBS miniseries, and it shows. There’s no expectation that the reader has any sort of background in New Spain and the author does a decent job of keeping any agenda out of the narratives.
Narratives.
One of the interesting things the book does is it makes no attempt to connect one conquistador with another, leaving Cortez and Pizarro curiously distant, but making it easier, again, for an introductory reader to access the book. If the author isn’t trying to connect the conquest into a single story, he also doesn’t have to worry about the underlying tensions and dramas that make a single narrative possible.
Wood covers 4 conquistadors: Cortez and the invasion of Mexico, Pizarro and the Incas, Orellana and the Amazon, and Cabeza de Vaca and his journey across the American southwest.
Even though he keeps the narratives separate to keep things simpler, he lets the people involved be complex and human, managing to avoid demonizing anyone involved while not ignoring the atrocities.
The biggest problem I have with the book is despite covering the early edge of the conquest, Wood doesn’t come to any sort of conclusion on why the Spanish succeeded in forming colonies. On one page he mentions disease, on another native allies, on a third technology and horses. This is confusing for the reader; what message are we meant to take away? If he intends to convey that the conquest was due to complex factors, his writing doesn’t indicate that: whenever he provides an explanation it is as if the only explanation for that situation. Which is weird, considering everyone and their cousin has an opinion on the key factor in the conquest.
Nevertheless, this is the book I’ll point to as an introduction to the Spanish in the Americas.
alexctelander's review
2.0
In this latest work on the Spanish conquistadors, an adaptation from the BBC television series, by Michael Wood, we have a whole new aspect of how the conquistadors behaved with their control over the New World.
It is almost as if Wood had once been a conquistador himself, as he retells of those brave soldiers walking in this alien terrain and fighting for their lives in an effort to civilize (or ethnically cleanse, perhaps?) those savage Indians who don’t know better. While this may come as a shock to some, from a historical and even cultural aspect, the readers gets an entire one-sided view of what the conquistadors thought of the Indians.
This glossy book, full of color photos, drawings and paintings, as well as an in-depth index, represents a useful historical source for anyone’s rich library, especially if they have a viewpoint in any way similar to Woods.
Originally published on November 12th 2001.
For over 500 book reviews, and over 40 exclusive author interviews (both audio and written), visit BookBanter.
It is almost as if Wood had once been a conquistador himself, as he retells of those brave soldiers walking in this alien terrain and fighting for their lives in an effort to civilize (or ethnically cleanse, perhaps?) those savage Indians who don’t know better. While this may come as a shock to some, from a historical and even cultural aspect, the readers gets an entire one-sided view of what the conquistadors thought of the Indians.
This glossy book, full of color photos, drawings and paintings, as well as an in-depth index, represents a useful historical source for anyone’s rich library, especially if they have a viewpoint in any way similar to Woods.
Originally published on November 12th 2001.
For over 500 book reviews, and over 40 exclusive author interviews (both audio and written), visit BookBanter.
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