Best Mexican History
From the author of the forthcoming book, Valiant Ambition , the riveting and critically acclaimed bestseller, soon to be a major motion picture starring Chris Hemsworth, directed by Ron Howard, premiering on December 11, 2015 Chris Hemsworth, Cillian Murphy, Ben Whishaw, and Brendan Gleeson will star in a new film based on this National Book Award–winning account of the true events behind Moby Dick . Nathaniel Philbrick 's In the Heart of the Sea is certainly cast from the same mold, examining the 19th-century Pacific whaling industry through the arc of the sinking of the whaleship Essex by a boisterous sperm whale. The story that inspired Herman Melville's classic Moby-Dick has a lot going for it--derring-do, cannibalism, rescue--and Philbrick proves an amiable and well-informed narrator, providing both context and detail. The epicenter of the whaling industry was Nantucket, a small island off Cape Cod; most of the whales were in the Pacific, necessitating a huge journey around the southernmost tip of South America. A maritime historian, Philbrick recounts the hellish wreck of the Essex (which inspired Melville's Moby-Dick) and its sailors' struggle to make their way to South America, 2,000 miles away. Philbrick shows how the Quaker establishment of Nantucket ran a hugely profitable whaling industry in the 18th and 19th centuries and provides a detailed account of shipboard life.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"AND THEN THE STORY EPITOMIZED THE GLEEFUL BLOOD LUST OF THE KILL FROM THE NANTUCKET SLEIGH RIDE TO THE FOUL DISMEMBERMENT OF THE NOBLE WHALE. IN THIS STORY IT SIMPLY PUT AN END ANY MORE KILLING BY THE MEN OF THE ESSEX."
"Very good book, and a great story."
"Interesting."
"I thoroughly enjoyed this true story."
"Based on watching the trailer, I'm very happy that I read the book first."
"Very entertaining and well researched, and it is a fascinating look at the life of whaling men, and those back on shore as well during that time period."
"Not for the weak of heart."
"I recently read other books by Philbrick, Bunker Hill and Valiant Ambition which I liked very much."
In an astonishing work of scholarship that reads like an adventure thriller, historian Buddy Levy records the last days of the Aztec empire and the two men at the center of an epic clash of cultures. Conquistador. is the story of a lost kingdom—a complex and sophisticated civilization where floating gardens, immense wealth, and reverence for art stood side by side with bloodstained temples and gruesome rites of human sacrifice. The saga of Cortés, Montezuma, and the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire has been chronicled repeatedly, and with justification, since it is one of the seminal events in world history. Levy is not a professional historian, but he is a fine writer who knows the material, and he is wise enough to allow the pure excitement and drama of the story to unfold naturally. "—Jeremy Schaap, best-selling author of Cinderella Man: James J. Braddock, Max Baer and the Greatest Upset in Boxing History, and Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics "Sweeping and majestic...A pulse-quickening narrative. "—Neal Bascomb, author of Red Mutiny: Eleven Fateful Days on the Battleship Potemkin "A century before the Mayflower, a single man settled the destiny of the Americas far more momentously than the Puritans ever could.... Conquistador offers a fascinating account of the first and most decisive of those encounters: the one between the impetuous Spanish adventurer Cortés and Montezuma, the ill-starred emperor of the Aztecs.... [An] almost unbelievable story of missionary zeal, greed, cruelty and courage.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I very interesting perspective on Cortez and the conquest of Mexico."
"I studied Cortez in HS and never learned any details."
"Nonetheless, Conquistador is a detailed and quick read on the conquest of Tenochtitlan and a closer look at the man Cortes."
"Deep insights into the cruel and narcissistic genius of Cortez and how guns, germs and steel brought Mexico to heal."
"I enjoyed the book."
"Academics can sometimes be critical when an author succeeds in providing clear and fluid writing with wonderful character development verses heavy factual nuances not relative to the real experience."
"A thumping good read...as they say."
"And the author doesn't pull punches; all the barbarous faults of individuals, peoples, and cultures are detailed with all the warts and without the modern hand-wringing revisionism."
Drawing on newly discovered sources and writing with brilliance, drama, and profound historical insight, Hugh Thomas presents an engrossing narrative of one of the most significant events of Western history. British historian Thomas's epic, spellbinding narrative history of conquistador Hernan Cortes's destruction of Montezuma's Aztec empire is a stunning meditation on Christian Spain's cataclysmic encounter with native American civilization. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. Digging into thousands of pages of legal testimony given in the 1520s by participants in Cortes's expedition against the Mexico of ancient Mesoamerica, Thomas revisits the Spanish invasion of the Aztec Empire. The complex genealogical interweaving of Castilian and Mexican royal families, the intricacies of battle strategy and tactics, the labyrinthine political machinations, and the brutal imposition of external standards of behavior and belief--all are described in a gripping narrative by Thomas, a British academic.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"With the Mexica, in the intimacy of Montezuma, how he didn't understand his strength and didn't act, because of his religious beliefs."
"This was the door opening wide on my early interest in Cortez and his times."
"Excellent research on the history of the conquest."
"Bad ass dude!"
"Excellent Book, great coverage of a truly fascination period of history and the daring audacity of Cortes."
"In both North & South America, including Middle America, of course, lands 'discovered' belonged to others, who were eventually pushed out of their homes & unfortunately massacred, for nothing more than greed, glory, and/or in the name of some queen, king or emperor, many times also under the guise of converting the natives to some unwanted & alien religions! The voracious greed really sickened me!"
"Super interesting and easy to read."
Best South American History
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 Roosevelts rich history could spawn a thousand adventure stories, but that Millards experience with National Geographic is evident in her beautiful scenic descriptions and grisly depictions of the Amazons man-eating catfish, ferocious piranhas, white-water rapids, and prospect of starvation. A story deep in symbolism and thick with research, Millard succeeds where many have not; she has managed to contain a little bit of Teddy Roosevelts energy and warm interactions between the covers of her wonderful new book.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"The story of this journey into the unexplored Amazon and the men who made it is full of adventure, danger and the bonds forged by men dealing with the kind of adversity that is not known today."
"The author also does a great job of adding color to the story by explaining things that the participants themselves had now way of knowing such as dangers of the jungle and its inhabitants that were completely obscured to the expedition party."
"Not the best book I've ever read, but a fun story and a nice start to learning about Roosevelt."
"Theodore Roosevelt, like Abraham Lincoln, was a fascinating person on many levels, and, as such, it is easy to be captivated by him. But writing about his life and his accomplishments is a lot easier than conveying the the heart and soul of the man. If all the things that occur in a person's life, the thoughts, the feelings, the events big and small, the intersecting lives, the loves, the friends, the enemies, the colleagues, the rivals all could be represented as strings, Ms. Millard shows the weaving of these strings into the rope that was the man himself. Hostile natives; blistering heat; ferocious animals, seen and unseen; rain; disease; floods."
"The end result of reading this book is a desire to learn more about Theodore Roosevelt (and maybe re-read a couple of Tarzan novels) and that, I think, is the measure of good biography."
"This book was well researched and well written with a mix of quotes from journals of the explorers with added background information on the Amazon rain forest that included research from before and since 1912."
"I had recently read Edmund Morris's second volume on TR and subsequently waded through Doris Kearns Goodwin's Bully Pulpit. She managed to make things that I would probably never consciously choose to read about (like the Amazon ecosystem) riveting to read about. In fact, I immediately ordered and read Millard's second book (Destiny of the Republic) about the assassination of James Garfield."
Best Central American History
The National Book Award–winning epic chronicle of the creation of the Panama Canal, a first-rate drama of the bold and brilliant engineering feat that was filled with both tragedy and triumph, told by master historian David McCullough. On December 31, 1999, after nearly a century of rule, the United States officially ceded ownership of the Panama Canal to the nation of Panama. A wave of fortune seekers descended on Panama from Europe and the eastern United States, seeking quick passage on California-bound ships in the Pacific, and the Panama Railroad, built to serve that traffic, was soon the highest-priced stock listed on the New York Exchange.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Because the French effort was publicly financed most of the detail concerns all the financial schemes needed to keep this project moving ahead. While this was important information to know as the basis for the subsequent American effort I do believe that it was vastly overdone and could have benefited from serious editing. In the history of this canal you have innovative people from a variety of disciplines from medicine to engineering, from management to human resources and it was fascinating to read about their problems and the solutions they devised to solve them. But I will grant that much of the fascination a reader could have had from this book was diluted by the cumbersome length and depth of detail."
"And I just want to say, in my opinion, Godin de Lepinay is really the unsung hero of the Panama Canal, the true genius behind the construction of the Canal. But in my going through the Canal the greatest engineering feature that struck me, was the one de Lepinay was the first to propose. I had no idea until I read the book who was the first to come up with the idea, but the book did mention it, and it was de Lepinay."
"My only complaint was it was a very long book but with that being said I enjoyed all the detail, relationships, antagonisms, bureaucracy, pitfalls (numerous), data, weather complications, Panamanian lifestyle, and tragically the loss of life."
"Incredible story of brave people, engineering and construction, exploration, health and sanitation. As between finance, politics and engineering, the latter is key to successful completion of a real-world project; the former two are also necessary and were poured in abundantly by French and Americans. A few slow spots are bogged by excessive detail, but the story is thoroughly researched and documented and oh so real and alive."