América
The Epic Story of Spanish North America, 1493-1898
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Narrated by:
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Thom Rivera
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By:
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Robert Goodwin
About this listen
An epic history of the Spanish empire in North America from 1493 to 1898 by Robert Goodwin, author of Spain: The Centre of the World.
At the conclusion of the American Revolution, half the modern United States was part of the vast Spanish Empire. The year after Columbus' great voyage of discovery, in 1492, he claimed Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands for Spain. For the next 300 years, thousands of proud Spanish conquistadors and their largely forgotten Mexican allies went in search of glory and riches from Florida to California. Many died; few triumphed. Some were cruel; some were curious; some were kind. Missionaries and priests yearned to harvest Indian souls for God through baptism and Christian teaching.
Theirs was a frontier world which Spain struggled to control in the face of Indian resistance and competition from France, Britain and finally the United States. In the 1800s, Spain lost it all.
Goodwin tells this history through the lives of the people who made it happen and the literature and art with which they celebrated their successes and mourned their failures. He weaves an epic tapestry from these intimate biographies of explorers and conquerors, like Columbus and Coronado, but also lesser known characters, like the powerful Gálvez family, who gave invaluable and largely forgotten support to the American patriots during the Revolutionary War; the great Pueblo leader Popay; and Esteban, the first documented African American. Like characters in a great play or a novel, Goodwin's protagonists walk the stage of history with heroism and brio and much tragedy.
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General Alex Dumas is a man almost unknown today, yet his story is strikingly familiar—because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used his larger-than-life feats as inspiration for such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.
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The story behind the greatest novelist of all time
- By Melinda on 01-13-13
By: Tom Reiss
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Alexander the Great
- By: Philip Freeman
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Alexander was born into the royal family of Macedonia, the kingdom that would soon rule over Greece. Tutored as a boy by Aristotle, Alexander had an inquisitive mind that would serve him well when he faced formidable obstacles during his military campaigns. Shortly after taking command of the army, he launched an invasion of the Persian Empire, and continued his conquests as far south as the deserts of Egypt and as far east as the mountains of present-day Pakistan and the plains of India.
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Great book!
- By BadGuidance on 06-18-17
By: Philip Freeman
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Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom
- China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War
- By: Stephen R. Platt
- Narrated by: Angela Lin
- Length: 17 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Stephen R. Platt is widely respected for his incisive nonfiction, particularly in regard to his knowledge and understanding of China. With Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom, Platt details the absorbing narrative of the Taiping Rebellion, which resulted in the loss of 20 million lives. Occurring in the 1850s, this is the story of a cultural movement characterized by intriguing personages such as influential military strategist Zeng Guofan and brilliant Taiping leader Hong Rengan.
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InTOLerable Reader
- By Adam on 07-07-12
By: Stephen R. Platt
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Blood and Thunder
- An Epic of the American West
- By: Hampton Sides
- Narrated by: Don Leslie
- Length: 20 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West marched through Santa Fe, en route to invade and occupy the Western territories claimed by Mexico. Fueled by the new ideology of “Manifest Destiny,” this land grab would lead to a decades-long battle between the United States and the Navajos, the fiercely resistant rulers of a huge swath of mountainous desert wilderness.
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Publisher's summary does not do it justice
- By Eric on 02-07-11
By: Hampton Sides
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Lions of the West
- Heroes and Villains of the Westward Expansion
- By: Robert Morgan
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 18 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Thomas Jefferson, a naturalist and visionary, dreamed that the United States would stretch across the continent from ocean to ocean. The account of how that dream became reality unfolds in the stories of Jefferson and nine other Americans whose adventurous spirits and lust for land pushed the westward boundaries: Andrew Jackson, John “Johnny Appleseed” Chapman, David Crockett, Sam Houston, James K. Polk, Winfield Scott, Kit Carson, Nicholas Trist, and John Quincy Adams.
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Pretty good
- By Chelsey on 05-11-16
By: Robert Morgan
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The Templars
- The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors
- By: Dan Jones
- Narrated by: Dan Jones
- Length: 15 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1307, as they struggled to secure their last strongholds in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Templars fell afoul of the vindictive and impulsive king of France. On Friday, October 13, hundreds of brothers were arrested en masse, imprisoned, tortured, and disbanded amid accusations of lurid sexual misconduct and heresy. They were tried by the Vatican in secret proceedings. But were they heretics or victims of a ruthlessly repressive state?
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Unexpected
- By Protogere on 10-30-17
By: Dan Jones
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Tories
- Fighting for the King in America's First Civil War
- By: Thomas B. Allen
- Narrated by: Jeremy Gage
- Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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The American Revolution was not simply a battle between independence-minded colonists and the oppressive British. As Thomas B. Allen reminds us, it was also a savage and often deeply personal civil war, in which conflicting visions of America pitted neighbor against neighbor and Patriot against Tory on the battlefield, the village green, and even in church.
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Mediocre Story, Poor Narrator
- By James on 12-30-10
By: Thomas B. Allen
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Peter the Great
- His Life and World
- By: Robert K. Massie
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 43 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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This superbly told story brings to life one of the most remarkable rulers––and men––in all of history and conveys the drama of his life and world. The Russia of Peter's birth was very different from the Russia his energy, genius, and ruthlessness shaped. Crowned co-Tsar as a child of ten, after witnessing bloody uprisings in the streets of Moscow, he would grow up propelled by an unquenchable curiosity, everywhere looking, asking, tinkering, and learning, fired by Western ideas.
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Narrater ruins everything
- By BrendaLouQuilts on 12-30-11
By: Robert K. Massie
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The Tuscarora War
- Indians, Settlers, and the Fight for the Carolina Colonies
- By: David La Vere
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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At dawn on September 22, 1711, more than five hundred Tuscarora, Core, Neuse, Pamlico, Weetock, Machapunga, and Bear River Indian warriors swept down on the unsuspecting European settlers living along the Neuse and Pamlico Rivers of North Carolina. During the following days, they destroyed hundreds of farms, killed at least 140 men, women, and children, and took about 40 captives. So began the Tuscarora War, North Carolina's bloodiest colonial war and surely one of its most brutal.
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neither a racist author nor a tale of genocide
- By wylie smith on 03-02-22
By: David La Vere
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American Heritage History of the Indian Wars
- American Heritage Series
- By: Robert M. Utley, Wilcomb E. Washburn
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed historians Robert M. Utley and Wilcomb E. Washburn examine both small battles and major wars - from the Native rebellion of 1492 to Crazy Horse and the Sioux War to the massacre at Wounded Knee.
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Entertaining but somewhat glib
- By Frederick on 07-21-24
By: Robert M. Utley, and others
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Lords of the Horizons
- A History of the Ottoman Empire
- By: Jason Goodwin
- Narrated by: Grahame Edwards
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
The Ottoman Empire has long exerted a strong pull on Western minds and hearts. For over 600 years the empire swelled and declined, rising from a dusty fiefdom in the foothills of Anatolia to a power which ruled over the Danube and the Euphrates with the richest court in Europe. But its decline was prodigious, protracted and total.
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Good introduction to the Ottomans, bad narration
- By Skeptical on 06-06-18
By: Jason Goodwin
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Suleiman the Magnificent: Sultan of the East
- By: Harold Lamb
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Suleiman the Magnificent is the story of the Ottoman Turks' greatest leader. He came to power at the early age of 25 in 1520. Before his death in 1566, he had altered the power structure and geography of Eastern Europe, and Turkey had become the dominant naval power in the Mediterranean. Suleiman's reign would mark the high tide of Turkish power in Asia Minor and Europe.
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A Great look into Suleiman The Magnificent & the Ottoman Empire
- By L Young on 08-14-19
By: Harold Lamb
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Too PC
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Conquistadores
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Over the few short decades that followed Christopher Columbus' first landing in the Caribbean in 1492, Spain conquered the two most powerful civilizations of the Americas: the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru. Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, and the other explorers and soldiers who took part in these expeditions dedicated their lives to seeking political and religious glory, helping to build an empire unlike any the world had ever seen. But centuries later, these conquistadors have become the stuff of nightmares.
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A fresh mature perspective on the Spanish conquest
- By Chencheno111 on 03-19-22
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The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo - Volume 1
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This memoir is an autobiographical account of the events as witnessed by Bernal Diaz - a Conquistador on that journey - a man from Spain who desperately hoped to carve out a life of riches for himself in the new world and instead found himself on an epic journey of conquest, whilst desperately fighting to stay alive, in previously unknown and unimagined lands. This is a true tale written in his own hand and translated into English. It is a gripping account of the events from the soldiers' viewpoint as each day becomes a battle for survival against incredible odds.
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First hand account of the Conquest of Mexico
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From the author of the Magellan biography, Over the Edge of the World, a mesmerizing new account of the great explorer. Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a trading route to China, and his unexpected landfall in the Americas, is a watershed event in world history.
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Very Petty and frankly flat out dishonest
- By Jm on 02-16-21
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The Other Slavery
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Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet, as Andrés Reséndez illuminates in his myth-shattering The Other Slavery, it was practiced for centuries as an open secret. There was no abolitionist movement to protect the tens of thousands of natives who were kidnapped and enslaved by the conquistadors, then forced to descend into the "mouth of hell" of 18th-century silver mines or, later, made to serve as domestics for Mormon settlers and rich Anglos.
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overall a good book
- By Paola V. Hidalgo on 01-23-17
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El Norte
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Because of our shared English language, as well as the celebrated origin tales of the Mayflower and the rebellion of the British colonies, the United States has prized its Anglo heritage above all others. However, as Carrie Gibson explains with great depth and clarity in El Norte, the nation has much older Spanish roots - ones that have long been unacknowledged or marginalized. The Hispanic past of the United States predates the arrival of the Pilgrims by a century, and has been every bit as important in shaping the nation as it exists today.
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Chicken Noodle History
- By Jose on 10-30-19
By: Carrie Gibson
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The First Frontier
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Frontier: the word carries the inevitable scent of the West. But before Custer or Lewis and Clark, before the first Conestoga wagons rumbled across the Plains, it was the East that marked the frontier - the boundary between complex Native cultures and the first colonizing Europeans.Here is the older, wilder, darker history of a time when the land between the Atlantic and the Appalachians was contested ground - when radically different societies adopted and adapted the ways of the other, while struggling for control of what all considered to be their land.
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Too PC
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By: Scott Weidensaul
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Conquistadores
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Over the few short decades that followed Christopher Columbus' first landing in the Caribbean in 1492, Spain conquered the two most powerful civilizations of the Americas: the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru. Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, and the other explorers and soldiers who took part in these expeditions dedicated their lives to seeking political and religious glory, helping to build an empire unlike any the world had ever seen. But centuries later, these conquistadors have become the stuff of nightmares.
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A fresh mature perspective on the Spanish conquest
- By Chencheno111 on 03-19-22
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This memoir is an autobiographical account of the events as witnessed by Bernal Diaz - a Conquistador on that journey - a man from Spain who desperately hoped to carve out a life of riches for himself in the new world and instead found himself on an epic journey of conquest, whilst desperately fighting to stay alive, in previously unknown and unimagined lands. This is a true tale written in his own hand and translated into English. It is a gripping account of the events from the soldiers' viewpoint as each day becomes a battle for survival against incredible odds.
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First hand account of the Conquest of Mexico
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By: Bernal Díaz Del Castilllo, and others
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Columbus
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From the author of the Magellan biography, Over the Edge of the World, a mesmerizing new account of the great explorer. Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a trading route to China, and his unexpected landfall in the Americas, is a watershed event in world history.
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Very Petty and frankly flat out dishonest
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overall a good book
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In the sixteenth century, the Spaniards became the first nation in history to have worldwide reach--across most of Europe to the Americas, the Philippines, and India. The Golden Age of the Spanish Empire would establish five centuries of Western supremacy across the globe and usher in an era of transatlantic exploration that eventually gave rise to the modern world. It was a time of discovery and adventure, of great political and social change. Robert Goodwin delves into previously unrecorded sources to bring this tumultuous and exciting period to life
By: Robert Goodwin
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A Land So Strange
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In 1528, a mission set out from Spain to colonize Florida. But the expedition went horribly wrong: Delayed by a hurricane, knocked off course by a colossal error of navigation, and ultimately doomed by a disastrous decision to separate the men from their ships, the mission quickly became a desperate journey of survival. Of the 300 men who had embarked on the journey, only four survived - three Spaniards and an African slave.
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A worthwhile listen
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The Pueblo Revolt
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The dramatic and tragic story of the only successful Native American uprising against the Spanish, the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.
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Telling a story that doesn’t want to be told
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Conquistadors and Aztecs
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- By: Stefan Rinke, Christopher Reid
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Written by a leading historian of Latin America, Conquistadors and Aztecs offers a timely portrayal of the fall of Tenochtitlan and the founding of an empire that would last for centuries.
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Gold and Death
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James Cook
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The name Captain James Cook is one of the most recognisable in Australian history - an almost mythic figure who is often discussed, celebrated, reviled and debated. But who was the real James Cook? This Yorkshire farm boy would go on to become the foremost mariner, scientist, navigator and cartographer of his era, and to personally map a third of the globe. His great voyages of discovery were incredible feats of seamanship and navigation.
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Great. But...
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The Last Days of the Incas
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In 1532, the 54-year-old Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro led a force of 167 men, including his four brothers, to the shores of Peru. Unbeknownst to the Spaniards, the Inca rulers of Peru had just fought a bloody civil war in which the emperor Atahualpa had defeated his brother, Huascar. Pizarro and his men soon clashed with Atahualpa and a huge force of Inca warriors at the Battle of Cajamarca.
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Interesting but problematic
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Book of the Hopi
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In this strange and wonderful book, thirty elders of the ancient Hopi tribe of Northern Arizona—a people who regard themselves as the first inhabitants of America—freely reveal the Hopi worldview for the first time in written form. The Hopi kept this view a secret for countless centuries, and anthropologists have long struggled to understand it. Now they record their myths and legends, and the meaning of their religious rituals and ceremonies as a gift to future generations.
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Great: But not an Audiobook.
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Conquistador
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It was a moment unique in human history: the face-to-face meeting between two men from civilizations a world apart. In 1519, Hernán Cortés arrived on the shores of Mexico, determined not only to expand the Spanish empire but to convert the natives to Catholicism and carry off a fortune in gold. That he saw nothing paradoxical in his intentions is one of the most remarkable and tragic aspects of this unforgettable story.
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A Great Book
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River of Darkness
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In 1541, the brutal conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro and his well-born lieutenant Francisco Orellana set off from Quito in search of La Canela, South America's rumored Land of Cinnamon, and the fabled El Dorado, "the golden man". Driving an enormous retinue of mercenaries, enslaved natives, horses, hunting dogs, and other animals across the Andes, they watched their proud expedition begin to disintegrate even before they descended into the nightmarish jungle, following the course of a powerful river.
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Amazing!
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When Montezuma Met Cortes
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- Unabridged
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In 1519, the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés first met Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, at the entrance to the capital city of Tenochtitlan. This introduction - the prelude to the Spanish seizure of Mexico City and to European colonization of the mainland of the Americas - has long been the symbol of Cortés' bold and brilliant military genius. Montezuma, on the other hand, is remembered as a coward who gave away a vast empire and touched off a wave of colonial invasions across the hemisphere. But is this really what happened?
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Flawed, but worth it for those interested.
- By "J" on 02-16-18
By: Matthew Restall
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Over the Edge of the World
- Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe
- By: Laurence Bergreen
- Narrated by: Laurence Bergreen
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
- Abridged
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In 1519 Magellan and his fleet of five ships set sail from Seville, Spain, to discover a water route to the fabled Spice Islands in Indonesia, where the most sought-after commodities (cloves, pepper, and nutmeg) flourished. Three years later, a handful of survivors returned with an abundance of spices from their intended destination, but with just one ship carrying 18 emaciated men. During their remarkable voyage around the world the crew endured starvation, disease, mutiny, and torture. Many men died, including Magellan, who was violently killed in a fierce battle.
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The Reading IS an Issue
- By mcbeene on 12-26-05
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Island of the Blue Foxes
- Disaster and Triumph on the World's Greatest Scientific Expedition
- By: Stephen R. Bown
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
The story of the world's largest, longest, and best-financed scientific expedition of all time, triumphantly successful, gruesomely tragic, and never before fully told. The immense 18th-century scientific journey, variously known as the Second Kamchatka Expedition or the Great Northern Expedition, from St. Petersburg across Siberia to the coast of North America, involved over 3,000 people and cost Peter the Great over one-sixth of his empire's annual revenue.
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Vivid History of Russia's First Contact In Alaska
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By: Stephen R. Bown
What listeners say about América
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kdots
- 12-14-24
Enthralling!
Wonderful book on the valiant men who conquered and civilized massive savage lands and peoples.
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- Ryan D Rogers
- 02-06-24
Comprehensive review of Spanish north America
This book touched on Spanish north american subjects that I had prior knowledge of and many more that I did not. The author does not get hung up on chronologically listing dates or converting currency's to today's value. Which when done is a pet peeve of mine. The narrator was hard to acclamate to but done the job well enough. Great book!
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- Alex A.
- 05-21-22
Very informative!
A very in-depth and detailed account of a largely forgotten period in American history! I highly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in the Spanish conquistadors and colonization of the New World, including in much of what became the modern United States.
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1 person found this helpful
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- James
- 10-29-20
glitches in recording???
I thought i was imagining things but it keeps happening.. there seem to be many places where the text repeats.. I keep hearing the same thing twice. Without seeing the actual text of the book it's hard to figure out if there is some reason for this..
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6 people found this helpful
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- Tyler Monroe
- 03-09-20
Solid history from Conquistadors to Independence.
loved it. History fans will appreciate. Highly recommend. South America Not discussed in depth.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Than
- 02-05-22
Not Regurgitated History
I got this book with a free credit then left it in my library for 3 years without listening to it. My worry was that I've read soooooo many books about Cortes and the Aztecs, Cabeza de Vaca's long journey in the Narvaez expedition, the conquest of Peru by Pizarro, etc that they all seem to run together and over each other with the same accounts after a while. After finally deciding to listen to this book I'm quite pleased that it has extensive accounts I've never heard before. It includes Juan Ponce de Leon's conquests in Puerto Rico and Florida, it has DeSoto's failed expedition into the American South, it has Coronado's expedition into Kansas, the Spanish expeditions into New Mexico, and beyond. It's a comprehensive book about all of them along the way. At a few points especially in the beginning it jumps forward and backward in time which might confuse some people, but other than that it generally starts at the beginning and goes forward through time. The book also compares different known accounts and questions the validity of some portions, which is interesting to hear. It's a much better book than I was expecting and if you like history and first contact stories this is definitely a book for you.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Ernesto Castaneda
- 11-10-22
Important American history everyone should know
Well researched, balanced book, full of important facts and context that many schools have not enough time to teach.
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- snozek
- 11-12-22
Biased for your gaslighting pleasure
1st, the performance is excellent. The narrator does a very good job and cannot be faulted.
As for the rest of the book, it really is a polemic work masquerading as an academic work.
Don't read this bad book.
The position's a spouse by the author often are not causal by the premises provided. It is common for conclusions to be extremely partisan with no regard for contrary information provided by the author himself.
The initial summary of the history of the Spanish Empire begins especially with assumption of the evil intent of fortnite and Isabella, the evil of the Inquisition, and the rapacious mentality of the Spaniards.
In particular, the characterization of the medieval and Spanish inquisitions reflects an almost comedic misunderstanding of the institutions.
This work is particularly bad. It is long. And worse than simply not addressing issues, it provides a false context, partial information, and extraordinarily biased conclusions, not even supported by what evidence is provided.
This work is historical revisionism set to modern sensibilities.
I suggest not rewarding this author or his poor work.
Don't read this book.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Pete
- 05-15-23
Biased. Hates the USA
Cherry picks details with eye-rolling inconsistencies:
Spanish: “he dispatched a letter…”
American: “he kidnapped a woman and forced her to write a letter…”
Lots of details, but the author’s agenda is laughably unsubtle
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-24-19
A Narration That is Difficult to Follow
This book would be good for an academic studying Spanish history. As a casual read, I found the book very hard to follow. The book focuses on personalities rather than events, and the seemingly endless Spanish names and places pronounced by the narrator in a thick Spanish accent made the story very hard to understand. I was hoping to gain a better understanding of the evolution of Spanish ascent and decline in the new world, but instead found myself struggling to keep the hundreds of names straight. It probably would have been easier to understand in written rather than oral form. Unless you have a thorough working knowledge of the Spanish language, I would not recommend this book.
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14 people found this helpful