Describes the conquest of Paraguay and the River Plate, of the Yucatan in Mexico, the only partial conquest of Chile, and battles with the French over Florida, and then, in the 1580s, the extraordinary projection of Spanish power across the Pacific to conquer the Philippines. It also describes how the Spanish ran the greatest empire the world had seen since Rome -- as well as conquistadores, the book is peopled with viceroys, judges, nobles, bishops,...

From one of the greatest historians of the Spanish world, here is a fresh and fascinating account of Spain's early conquests in the Americas. Hugh Thomas shows Spain at the dawn of the sixteenth century as a world power on the brink of greatness. For Spain and for the world, the decision to send Christopher Columbus west was epochal-the dividing line between the medieval and the modern. Spain's colonial adventures began inauspiciously. In spite of...

Zarité, a nine-year-old girl of mixed race, is sold as a slave in eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue, the future Haiti, and later follows her former master to Lousiana.

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, 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...

"New Spain, 1810. After a strange woman hands Leona Vicario a silver medal at the market, she begins to receive cryptic messages from an unknown sender, who asks her to meet them at the Temple of the Profesa. Soon the mystery becomes even bigger: who are the Guadalupes? What do they want from her? How do you know who supports independence and who is loyal to the viceroy? Opening the door to an adventure that will take her to every corner of the capital...