Best Ecuadoran History

Can forests think? The semiotics in this well-wrought book are technical, worked, demanding, tuned to form and modality, alert to emergent properties, multinaturally and ethnographically precise. Besides all that, this book is a powerfully good read, one that changed my dreams and reworked my settled habits of interpretation, even the multispecies ones.” -- Donna Haraway, UC Santa Cruz. “I can only call this thought-leaping in the most creative sense. “A remarkable aspect of [this book] is the complex – and often beautifully written – intermingling of subtle theoretical propositions with an even subtler ethnography.” — Philippe Descola, Collège de France.

The remarkable first-hand account of. In 1932, when Wittmer (then pregnant), her husband, Heinz, and his son, Harry--Germans in search of an Edenesque environment--arrived on Floreana, a remote island in the Galapagos, they first dwelled in caves once inhabited by pirates, the "roads" were tracks made by wild donkeys and their only neighbors were a misanthropic back-to-nature theorist and his disciple. In 1932, Margaret Wittmer leaves Germany with her husband and step-son and travels to Floreana, a small, almost unpopulated island in the Galapagos chain, where they settle, clear land, and, after five months of living in old pirates' caves, move into the house they finish just in time for Margaret to have a baby.

Offering the first full-scale analysis of the filibustering movement, Robert May relates the often-tragic stories of illegal expeditions into Cuba, Mexico, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and other Latin American countries and details surprising numbers of aborted plots, as well. [May] explores nearly every aspect of the private military expeditions that brought notoriety and dreams of empire to generations of adventurers. This volume, with its unshakable interpretation, pertinent maps and illustrations, copious notes, and engaging style, should emerge as the definitive work on American filibustering.-- North Carolina Historical Review. This, of course, is Robert E. May's essential point: the filibusters, who had a critical impact on contemporary American culture and politics, have largely vanished from our historical memory. No one has heretofore synthesized the filibusterers' activities and analyzed who served, their motivation, ideology, funding, and role in the broader milieu. This is one of those rare books that combine all the elements of an outstanding work of history by blending an interesting topic, thorough research, and excellent writing to present the best portrayal of antebellum filibustering to date. This outstanding book is appropriate for those interested in the antebellum period, Latin American history, or foreign policy of the era.-- Choice. May judiciously weighs difficult and conflicting evidence in this unfailingly interesting treatment of filibustering that offers the reader few genuine heroes but a large cast of colorful villains. With a superb eye for the telling detail and the revealing quotation, May convincingly demonstrates how the most fanatical advocates of Manifest Destiny also did the most to discredit territorial expansion.--George C. Rable, University of Alabama. Exhaustively researched and comprehensive in scope, Manifest Destiny's Underworld is the first book successfully to integrate filibustering into the antebellum American experience. Equally important, the book will be of immense value to scholars interested in the larger, geopolitical role that the United States played during the nineteenth century. [ Manifest Destiny's Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America ] is an important and well-written book that restores to its proper place a little known but significant topic in American history.-- Manhattan Journal of the West.

By the New York Times bestselling author of Manson , the comprehensive, authoritative, and tragic story of preacher Jim Jones, who was responsible for the Jonestown Massacre—the largest murder-suicide in American history. In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones’s life, from his extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing to the fraught decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America. The level of research and detail in The Road to Jonestown is the best ever, and really lets readers understand not only what happened, but how and why. “Jeff Guinn offers what might be the most complete picture to date of this tragic saga, and of the man who engineered it. The result is a disturbing portrait of evil — and a compassionate memorial to those taken in by Jones’ malign charisma.” (Kevin Canfield The San Francisco Chronicle ). Guinn's exhaustive research, shrewd analysis, and engaging prose illuminate a monstrous yet tragic figure--and the motives of those who lost their souls to him." The book reads like a thriller, each page forcing your attention to the next as the Peoples Temple slowly slides from groundbreaking progressivism toward madness.” (Kevin J. Hamilton Seattle Times ). "A vivid, fascinating revisitation of a time and series of episodes fast receding into history even as their forgotten survivors still walk among us."

Alternating between reportage, personal vignettes, interviews, travelogues, and folklore, and richly conveyed with anger, sadness, irony, and occasional humor, Galeano pays loving tribute to the courage and determination of those who continued to believe in, and fight for, a more human existence. "'Days and Nights succeeds not only because of its socio-political authenticity and lyrical style but because of its anger and tenderness, elation and sorrow.'.

This thrilling and mysterious account of Fawcett’s ten years of travels in deadly jungles and forests in search of a secret city was compiled by his younger son, Fawcett's companion on his journeys, from manuscripts, letters, and logbooks. This is a stirring and sensitive record, well written by a true explorer whose trail ended in jungle asterisks―a book to live in, if one has old Fawcett's heart.

The Chaco War was massive territorial war between Bolivia and Paraguay, which cost almost a 100,000 lives. - Scott Van Aken, Modelling Madness "Throughout the book are a superb collection of period photos and illustrations.

Together with his son Kermit and Brazil’s most famous explorer, Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt accomplished a feat so great that many at the time refused to believe it. Along the way, Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks. The beauty of this story is not just that Roosevelt’s rich history could spawn a thousand adventure stories, but that Millard’s experience with National Geographic is evident in her beautiful scenic descriptions and grisly depictions of the Amazon’s man-eating catfish, ferocious piranhas, white-water rapids, and prospect of starvation.

The exclusive, official story of the survival, faith, and family of Chile's thirty-three trapped miners. “Weaving together the drama of the miners' harrowing ordeal below ground with the anguish of families and rescuers on the surface, Tobar delivers a masterful account of exile and human longing, of triumph in the face of all odds. Taut with suspense and moments of tenderness and replete with a cast of unforgettable characters, Deep Down Dark ranks with the best of adventure literature. As Tobar works his way through each miner's recovery, the TV headlines recede from our memory, and a more delicate series of portraits emerges.” ― Noah Gallagher Shannon, The Washington Post. Whether the story is completely new to you, or if you were one of the millions glued to the news reports and wondering, will they make it--physically, emotionally, spiritually--you'll be greatly rewarded to learn how they did.” ― Mac McClelland, The New York Times Book Review. A novelist and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, [Tobar] combines a historian's eye for context with a gifted storyteller's ear for minor-key character traits . “If Dante's Inferno was a real place, it would look and feel like the subterranean fever dream Héctor Tobar describes in Deep Down Dark . Taking us into the post-apocalyptic landscape of Chile's Atacama Desert and guiding us through the labyrinthine hell of the world's most famous mine accident, Tobar's taut narrative plumbs the depths not only of the mine itself, but of the 33 trapped miners' hearts and souls as they fight for life, and reconcile themselves--first, to death, and then to the far more challenging task of surviving. “Héctor Tobar takes us so far down into the story and lives of the Chilean miners that his reconstruction of a workplace disaster becomes a riveting meditation on universal human themes. “In this masterful dissection of the 2010's dramatic sixty-nine day ordeal by thirty-three trapped Chilean miners, Héctor Tobar weaves a suspenseful narrative that moves back and forth between the waking nightmares of the buried men, and those of their families on the earth's surface. “It's almost hard to believe that Héctor Tobar wasn't himself one of the trapped Chilean miners, so vivid, immediate, terrifying, emotional, and convincing is his Homeric narration of this extraordinary incident. Deep Down Dark is a literary masterpiece of narrative journalism, surgical in its reconstruction, novelistic in its explorations of human personality and nuance. In a manner that feels spiritual, Tobar puts himself at the service of his story, and his fidelity to and unquenchable curiosity about every fact and detail generates unforgettable wonderment and awe.” ― Francisco Goldman. I know 2014 still has three months left to go, but I don’t expect to find anything I liked better than Héctor Tobar’s Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free. You know the story – 33 men were buried in a spectacular mine collapse, stayed underground for two months, and then were rescued, all of them unharmed.

Forgotten Peace examines Colombian society’s attempt to move beyond the Western Hemisphere’s worst mid-century conflict and shows how that effort molded notions of belonging and understandings of the past. In a vivid narrative that traces the interactions of local actors, intellectuals, and the Colombian state, Karl provides an entirely new explanation for the emergence of the FARC guerrillas from an ambivalent and fragmented peace process.”—Nancy P. Appelbaum, author of Mapping the Country of Regions: The Chorographic Commission of Nineteenth-Century Colombia.

It shows how, despite incredible dangers and obstacles, one humble man and a tribe of primitive, violent Indians by joining together in simple obedience have been transformed forever by the sovereign will of god. Bruce Olson, born in Minnesota and now a citizen of Colombia, is a linguist and graduate of sociology from a South American university.

While history has recast Bingham as a villain who stole both priceless artifacts and credit for finding the great archeological site, Mark Adams set out to retrace the explorer’s perilous path in search of the truth—except he’d written about adventure far more than he’d actually lived it. “Adams deftly weaves together Inca history, Bingham's story, and his own less heroic escapade....Those favoring a quirkier retelling [of Bingham's exploits] will relish Mr. Adam's wry, revealing romp through the Andes.”— The Wall Street Journal.

This book not only tells of the escape of Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun and others of the Third Reich; it includes photographs, files from the FBI, CIA and OSS that show the US knew they escaped, interviews and much more.

This abridgment of the Prices' acclaimed 1988 critical edition is based on Stedman's original, handwritten manuscript, which offers a portrait at considerable variance with the 1796 classic. Richard Price is the author of twelve books, including an earlier work on the Saramaka people, the award-winning First Time: The Historical Vision of an Afro-American People .