This pioneering book, a founding text of African diaspora studies, continues to hold a prominent place in any bibliography of its field and remains the only general history on the people of African descent in the Spanish-speaking nations of the Western hemisphere. Rout engagingly presents the broad historical contours of the African experience in Spanish America, from enslavement, resistance, and rebellion to the crucial participation of Afro-Latin Americans in the wars of independence, and a region-by-region account of their varied treatment in the newly-founded republics from the nineteenth century to the modern era.

The epic story of the fall of the Inca Empire to Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro in the aftermath of a bloody civil war, and the recent discovery of the lost guerrilla capital of the Incas, Vilcabamba, by three American explorers.In 1532, the fifty-four-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. Despite being outnumbered by more than two hundred to one, the Spaniards prevailed--due largely to their horses, their steel armor and swords, and their tactic of surprise. They captured and imprisoned Atahualpa. Although the Inca emperor paid an enormous ransom in gold, the Spaniards executed him anyway. The following year, the Spaniards seized the Inca capital of Cuzco, completing their conquest of the largest native empire the New World has ever known. Peru was now a Spanish colony, and the conquistadors were wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. But the Incas did not submit willingly. A young Inca emperor, the brother of Atahualpa, soon led a massive rebellion against the Spaniards, inflicting heavy casualties and nearly wiping out the conquerors. Eventually, however, Pizarro and his men forced the emperor to abandon the Andes and flee to the Amazon. There, he established a hidden capital, called Vilcabamba--only recently rediscovered by a trio of colorful American explorers. Although the Incas fought a deadly, thirty-six-year-long guerrilla war, the Spanish ultimately captured the last Inca emperor and vanquished the native resistance.

For readers of Say Nothing and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the epic true story of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo--grandmothers who fought to find their stolen grandchildren during Argentina's brutal dictatorship.

In the early hours of March 24th, 1976, the streets of Buenos Aires rumbled with tanks as soldiers seized the presidential palace and toppled Argentina's leader. The country was now under the control of a military junta, with army chief Jorge Rafael Videla at the helm. With quiet support from the United States and tacit approval from Argentina's people, who were tired of constant bombings and gunfights, the junta swiftly launched the National Reorganization Process or El Proceso--a bland name masking their ruthless campaign to crush the political left and instill the country with Western, Christian values. The junta held power until 1983 and decimated a generation.

One of the military's most diabolical acts was disappearing hundreds of pregnant women. Patricia Roisinblit was among them, a mother and leftist revolutionary labeled subversive and abducted while eight months pregnant with her second child. She gave birth in captivity, making one last call to her mother, Rosa, before she was never heard from again. Her newborn son was one of hundreds of babies secretly given to other families, many of them headed by police or military officers. For Rosa and other mothers of pregnant daughters and daughters-in-law, their grief was twofold--the disappearances of their children, and the theft of their grandchildren. A group of fierce grandmothers formed the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, dedicated to finding the stolen infants and seeking justice from a nation that betrayed them.

A Flower Traveled in My Blood is Rosa and the Abuelas' extraordinary story, told by a journalist with unique access. With authority and compassion, Haley Cohen Gilliland brings this tale to life, tracing the lives of young mother Patricia, grandmother Rosa, and stolen newborn, Guillermo. At a time when speaking out meant death, the Abuelas confronted military officers and launched protests to reach international diplomats and journalists. They became detectives, adopting disguises to see suspected grandchildren, and even working alongside an American scientist to pioneer groundbreaking genetics tests.

A compelling mystery and deeply researched account of a pivotal era in world history, A Flower Traveled in My Blood takes readers on a journey of love, resilience, and redemption, revealing new truths about memory, identity, and family.

One of Argentina's 30,000 disappeared, Alicia Partnoy was abducted from her home by secret police and taken to a concentration camp where she was tortured, and where most of the other prisoners were killed. Smuggled out and published anonymously, The Little School is Partnoy's memoir of her disappearance and imprisonment.

Vivid, powerful and absorbing, this is a first-person account of one of the most startling military episodes in history: the overthrow of Montezuma's doomed Aztec Empire by the ruthless Hernan Cortes and his band of adventurers. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, himself a soldier under Cortes, presents a fascinatingly detailed description of the Spanish landing in Mexico in 1520 and their amazement at the city, the exploitation of the natives for gold and other treasures, the expulsion and flight of the Spaniards, their regrouping and eventual capture of the Aztec capital.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Can forests think? Do dogs dream? In this astonishing book, Eduardo Kohn challenges the very foundations of anthropology, calling into question our central assumptions about what it means to be human--and thus distinct from all other life forms. Based on four years of fieldwork among the Runa of Ecuador's Upper Amazon, Eduardo Kohn draws on his rich ethnography to explore how Amazonians interact with the many creatures that inhabit one of the world's most complex ecosystems. Whether or not we recognize it, our anthropological tools hinge on those capacities that make us distinctly human. However, when we turn our ethnographic attention to how we relate to other kinds of beings, these tools (which have the effect of divorcing us from the rest of the world) break down. How Forests Think seizes on this breakdown as an opportunity. Avoiding reductionistic solutions, and without losing sight of how our lives and those of others are caught up in the moral webs we humans spin, this book skillfully fashions new kinds of conceptual tools from the strange and unexpected properties of the living world itself. In this groundbreaking work, Kohn takes anthropology in a new and exciting direction-one that offers a more capacious way to think about the world we share with other kinds of beings.

A sweeping and absorbing biography of Brazil, from the sixteenth century to the present

For many Americans, Brazil is a land of contradictions: vast natural resources and entrenched corruption; extraordinary wealth and grinding poverty; beautiful beaches and violence-torn favelas. Brazil occupies a vivid place in the American imagination, and yet it remains largely unknown.

In an extraordinary journey that spans five hundred years, from European colonization to the 2016 Summer Olympics, Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling's Brazil offers a rich, dramatic history of this complex country. The authors not only reconstruct the epic story of the nation but follow the shifting byways of food, art, and popular culture; the plights of minorities; and the ups and downs of economic cycles. Drawing on a range of original scholarship in history, anthropology, political science, and economics, Schwarcz and Starling reveal a long process of unfinished social, political, and economic progress and struggle, a story in which the troubled legacy of the mixing of races and postcolonial political dysfunction persist to this day.

The Compelling True Story of Life at the Far Reaches of Civilization

E. Lucas Bridges provides in his brilliantly written book our most valuable resource on the lost heritage of the Yamana. The Daily Beagle

Famous for being the southernmost city in the world, the wild and windswept port of Ushuaia sits at the inhospitable southern tip of Tierra del Fuego in South America. That rugged, rocky landscape of sharp mountains, beech forests, and barren outcrops was originally home to hunter-gatherer Yaghan Indians, the southernmost indigenous people on the planet. The western world's colonization of the area (sometimes called Fireland) began in the 1800s when explorers and missionaries established settlements. The Bridges family was part of this movement as the founders of Ushuaia, and author E. Lucas Bridges was born there in 1874.

This classic memoir chronicles the captivating Bridges' early life among the coastal Yaghan people and his later initiation into the more remote and fierce Ona tribe. Confronted with unfamiliar cultures and traditions, Bridges engages fully, committing himself to learning and participating in the ways of his neighbors, people he would proudly come to call his friends. As a respected equal, he learns to hunt, fish, farm, canoe, and live amongst them.

Bridges' revealing personal account captures the geography and natural history of the isolated region flawlessly, painting the stunning scenery and amazing encounters in vivid detail. It also documents the tragedy of European colonization. The Yaghans were decimated by disease and violent inter-cultural conflicts; Bridges' unmistakable compassion and admiration for the people and their traditional heritage mark Uttermost Part of the Earth as a seminal work in the literature of historical anthropology. A lucid, informative, funny, and singular first-hand account, this epic autobiography, accompanied by maps and photographs, is a captivating read for anyone interested in exploring the indigenous peoples, culture, and ecology of this exotic homeland at the end of the world.

This book is also available from Echo Point Books as a hardcover (ISBN 1648371752).

This timeless memoir chronicles life among the coastal Yaghan. Bridges combines personal experience and great storytelling to make the history, life, and geography of this very remote region come alive. But don't take our word for it; listen to what readers and reviewers say:

-Overall, Amazon readers rate Uttermost Part of the Earth 4.7 stars out of 5 (for context, note that across its various editions, Tolstoy's brilliant classic novel Anna Karenina is rated 4.5 out of 5 on Amazon.com):

I've been telling people while completing this book that it's one of the top three I've ever read, and now having no story left to discover and longing for more, it's quite safe to say that this is the best book I have ever read.

- Goodreads

A most amazing book.

- The Daily Beagle

A masterpiece of historical anthropology and impressive personal enterprise. A classic for anyone with an interest in adventure and travel in wild places.

-Amazon reviewer

This book is as full of romance as any novel. Written by a man who knew the Fuegian Indians-one who had lived among them for many years and had mastered their intricate languages-the ... life of Don Lucas Bridges in Tierra del Fuego is also a unique ethnological value.

-The Americas by Cambridge University Press

A classic ... rip-roaring account of his life among the Indians of Tierra del Fuego. Bridges' engaging style speaks from a different era.

-LiteraryTraveler.com

A new history of Brazil told through the lens of the often-overlooked interior regions.

In colonial Brazil, observers frequently complained that Portuguese settlers appeared content to remain clinging to the coastline, like crabs. From their perspective, the vast Brazilian interior seemed like an untapped expanse waiting to be explored and colonized. This divide between a thriving coastal area and a less-developed hinterland has become deeply ingrained in the nation's collective imagination, perpetuating the notion of the interior as a homogeneous, stagnant periphery awaiting the dynamic influence of coastal Brazil.

The Interior challenges these narratives and reexamines the history of Brazil using an interior history perspective. This approach aims to reverse the conventional conceptual and geographical boundaries often employed to study Brazilian history, and, by extension, Latin America as a whole. Through the work of twelve leading scholars, the volume highlights how the people and spaces within the interior have played a pivotal role in shaping national identities, politics, the economy, and culture. The Interior goes beyond the traditional boundaries of borderland and frontier history, expands on the current wave of scholarship on regionalism in Brazil, and, by asking new questions about space and nation, provides a fresh perspective on Brazil's history.

In late nineteenth-century Latin America, governments used new scientific, technological, and geographical knowledge not only to consolidate power and protect borders but also to define the physical contours of their respective nations. Chilean and Argentine authorities in particular attempted to transform northern Patagonia, a space they perceived as desert, through a myriad of nationalizing policies, from military campaigns to hotels. But beyond the urban governing halls of Chile and Argentina, explorers, migrants, local authorities, bandits, and visitors also made sense of the nation by inhabiting the physical space of the northern Patagonian Andes. They surveyed passes, opened roads, claimed land titles or leases, traveled miles to the nearest police station, rode miles on horseback to escape the police, and hiked the landscape.
María de los Ángeles Picone tells the story of how people living, governing, and traveling through northern Patagonia sought to construct versions of Chile and Argentina based on their ideas about and experiences in geographical space in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By repositioning the analytical focus from Santiago and Buenos Aires to northern Patagonia, Picone reveals how a wide array of actors, with varying degrees of political, economic, and social power, assigned distinctive--and sometimes conflicting--meanings to space and national identity.

This will stand as the definitive work on Chile under Pinochet for many years to come.-Library Journal

How Chile, once South America's most stable democracy, gave way to a culture of fear. The authors explain and illuminate the rift in Chilean society that widened dramatically during the Pinochet era.

A thoughtfully observed travel memoir and history as richly detailed as it is deeply felt (Kirkus Reviews) of South America, from Butch Cassidy to Che Guevara to cocaine king Pablo Escobar to Charles Darwin, all set in the Andes Mountains.

The Andes Mountains are the world's longest mountain chain, linking most of the countries in South America. Kim MacQuarrie takes us on a historical journey through this unique region, bringing fresh insight and contemporary connections to such fabled characters as Charles Darwin, Che Guevara, Pablo Escobar, Butch Cassidy, Thor Heyerdahl, and others. He describes living on the floating islands of Lake Titcaca. He introduces us to a Patagonian woman who is the last living speaker of her language. We meet the woman who cared for the wounded Che Guevara just before he died, the police officer who captured cocaine king Pablo Escobar, the dancer who hid Shining Path guerrilla Abimael Guzman, and a man whose grandfather witnessed the death of Butch Cassidy.

Collectively these stories tell us something about the spirit of South America. What makes South America different from other continents--and what makes the cultures of the Andes different from other cultures found there? How did the capitalism introduced by the Spaniards change South America? Why did Shining Path leader Guzman nearly succeed in his revolutionary quest while Che Guevara in Bolivia was a complete failure in his?

MacQuarrie writes smartly and engagingly and with...enthusiasm about the variety of South America's life and landscape (The New York Times Book Review) in Life and Death in the Andes. Based on the author's own deeply observed travels, this is a well-written, immersive work that history aficionados, particularly those with an affinity for Latin America, will relish (Library Journal).

The Buenos Aires Reader offers an insider's look at the diverse lived experiences of the people, politics, and culture of Argentina's capital city primarily from the nineteenth century to the present. Refuting the tired cliché that Buenos Aires is the Paris of South America, this book gives a nuanced view of a city that has long been attentive to international trends yet never ceases to celebrate its local culture. The vibrant opinions, reflections, and voices of Buenos Aires come to life through selections that range from songs, poems, letters, and essays to interviews, cartoons, paintings, and historical documents, many of which have been translated into English for the first time. These selections tell the story of the city's culture of protest and celebration, its passion for soccer and sport, its gastronomy and food traditions, its legendary nightlife, and its musical, literary, and artistic cultures. Providing an unparalleled look at Buenos Aires's history, culture, and politics, this volume is an ideal companion for anyone interested in this dynamic, disruptive, and inventive city.

Ostensibly a biography of the gaucho barbarian Juan Facundo Quiroga, Facundo is also a complex, passionate work of history, sociology, and political commentary, and Latin America's most important essay of the nineteenth century. It is a study of the Argentine character, a prescription for the modernization of Latin America, and a protest against the tyranny of the government of Juan Manuel de Rosas (1835-1852). The book brings nineteenth-century Latin American history to life even as it raises questions still being debated today--questions regarding the civilized city versus the barbaric countryside, the treatment of indigenous and African populations, and the classically liberal plan of modernization. Facundo's celebrated and frequently anthologized portraits of Quiroga and other colorful characters give readers an exhilarating sense of Argentine culture in the making.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

A New History of Modern Latin America provides an engaging and readable narrative history of the nations of Latin America from the Wars of Independence in the nineteenth century to the democratic turn in the twenty-first. This new edition of a well-known text has been revised and updated to include the most recent interpretations of major themes in the economic, social, and cultural history of the region to show the unity of the Latin America experience while exploring the diversity of the region's geography, peoples, and cultures. It also presents substantial new material on women, gender, and race in the region. Each chapter begins with primary documents, offering glimpses into moments in history and setting the scene for the chapter, and concludes with timelines and key words to reinforce content. Discussion questions are included to help students with research assignments and papers.

Both professors and students will find its narrative, chronological approach a useful guide to the history of this important area of the world.

From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Greg Grandin comes the stunning, never before told story of the quixotic attempt to recreate small-town America in the heart of the Amazon

In 1927, Henry Ford, the richest man in the world, bought a tract of land twice the size of Delaware in the Brazilian Amazon. His intention was to grow rubber, but the project rapidly evolved into a more ambitious bid to export America itself, along with its golf courses, ice-cream shops, bandstands, indoor plumbing, and Model Ts rolling down broad streets.

Fordlandia, as the settlement was called, quickly became the site of an epic clash. On one side was the car magnate, lean, austere, the man who reduced industrial production to its simplest motions; on the other, the Amazon, lush, extravagant, the most complex ecological system on the planet. Ford's early success in imposing time clocks and square dances on the jungle soon collapsed, as indigenous workers, rejecting his midwestern Puritanism, turned the place into a ribald tropical boomtown. Fordlandia's eventual demise as a rubber plantation foreshadowed the practices that today are laying waste to the rain forest.

More than a parable of one man's arrogant attempt to force his will on the natural world, Fordlandia depicts a desperate quest to salvage the bygone America that the Ford factory system did much to dispatch. As Greg Grandin shows in this gripping and mordantly observed history, Ford's great delusion was not that the Amazon could be tamed but that the forces of capitalism, once released, might yet be contained.

Fordlandia is a 2009 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.

In the mid-nineteenth century, decades after independence in Latin America, borderlands presented existential challenges to consolidating nation-states. In Place of Mobility examines how and why these spaces became challenging to governments and what their meaningfulness is for our understanding of the development of a global world by examining one of those spaces: the Trans-Andean, an Argentine-Chilean borderland connected by the Andes mountains and centered on the Argentine region of Cuyo. It answers these questions by interweaving three narratives: Chilean migration to western Argentina; mountain-crossing Argentine rebels; and the formation of plans for railroads to cross the mountains.

Out of these narratives emerges a twofold argument that, on the one hand, locates the causes and stakes of foundational national conflicts in Argentina in a Pacific-facing Trans-Andean and, on the other hand, sees the Trans-Andean as part of mid-nineteenth-century globalization, thus connecting national conflicts, nonnational geographies, and globalization. As a result, this book challenges dominant narratives about social and political conflicts at this formative moment in Argentine and Latin American history while opening up discussion on the methodologies and meaningfulness of transnational, borderlands, and global histories.