Conquistador Voices: The Spanish Conquest of the Americas as Recounted Largely by the Participants (Vol. I) - Softcover

Siepel, Kevin H

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0978646622 ISBN 13: 9780978646622

Publisher: Spruce Tree Press, 2015

Synopsis

The Spanish Conquest: What Really Happened?

If you’re a person who likes to learn the messy details of events likely sanitized in your schoolbooks, Conquistador Voices may be for you.

You're likely to find this book not only informative but easy to read, because Conquistador Voices is built around first-person narratives—the kind of thing that usually holds our attention. Think of it as a film documentary in written form, one that tells an important story in 500-year-old “sound bites” and narrative, and that does so in a way that informs without moralizing.

In this two-volume set you'll find neither a defense of the conquistadors nor a politically correct polemic against them.

What you will find is a one-stop, five-part layman's summary of the Conquest, one that delves dispassionately into persons and events we still talk about today. To see who’s covered in each volume, click on the volume’s cover image and then Look Inside. If you like what you see, order a copy for yourself or other history buff today.

About this title

From the Back Cover

If all you know about the conquistadors is what you learned in school, this book may be for you.This is not a standard history book, but rather a sort of television documentary in written form. In it you will hear the voices of the conquistadors themselves as they tell you--through a series of "sound bites" that they themselves have provided--what they saw and did during the Conquest. These voices have been brought together and context established by the author as narrator, to provide you with a vivid, streamlined, and overall compelling reading experience.The entire sweep of the Conquest is covered in two volumes of adventure--Christopher Columbus and Hernán Cortés in Volume I, and Francisco Pizarro, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, and Hernando de Soto in Volume II. You'll be whisked from the islands of the Indies to central America, Mexico, Peru, today's southeastern US, Mexico again, Paraguay, and back to the US, in the process having to embark on two desperate escapes by sea.Delve into these five narratives--a one-stop Conquest summary for the general reader--and you should come away with a fuller and more realistic appreciation of those epic times than you may have ever had before.

About the Author

Kevin H. Siepel writes on personal, historical, and environmental themes. His most recent work is the two-volume Conquistador Voices, a fresh look at the Spanish Conquest of the Americas that makes extensive use of newly-translated first-person accounts by conquistadors or others to whom the account may have been dictated. The five personages covered in these two volumes are Christopher Columbus, Hernan Cortes, Francisco Pizarro, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, and Hernando de Soto.The author's benchmark Rebel: The Life and Times of John Singleton Mosby (St. Martin's, DaCapo, University of Nebraska Press) has proven durable, as has his biography of a western New York state pioneer, which also broke new ground.Siepel's essays and articles have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Service Journal, Civil War, Wild West, two Chicken Soup for the Soul volumes, at wordworth.com, and elsewhere. One of his Monitor essays was translated into several languages and published worldwide by Readers Digest.Siepel speaks and teaches Spanish.

Edition details

• Publisher: Spruce Tree Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0978646622
• ISBN 13: 9780978646622
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 340