A Land So Strange

Author: Andrés Reséndez
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 9780465068418
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The extraordinary tale of a shipwrecked Spaniard who walked across America in the sixteenth century In 1527, a mission set out from Spain to colonize Florida. But the expedition went horribly wrong: delayed by a hurricane and knocked off course by a colossal error of navigation, the mission quickly became a desperate journey of survival. Of the three hundred men who had embarked, only four survived--three Spaniards and an African slave. This tiny band endured a horrific march through Florida, a harrowing raft passage across the Louisiana coast, and years of enslavement in the American Southwest. They journeyed for almost ten years in search of the Pacific Ocean that would guide them home, seeing lands, peoples, plants, and animals that no outsider had before. In this enthralling tale of four castaways wandering in an unknown land, Andrés Reséndez brings to life the vast, dynamic world of North America just a few years before European settlers would transform it forever.

Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition

Author: Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1440630542
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Book Description
The New World story of the Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca in his own words This riveting true story is the first major narrative detailing the exploration of North America by Spanish conquistadors (1528-1536). The author, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, was a fortune-seeking Spanish nobleman and the treasurer of an expedition sent to claim for Spain a vast area of today's southern United States. In simple, straightforward prose, Cabeza de Vaca chronicles the nine-year odyssey endured by the men after a shipwreck forced them to make a westward journey on foot from present-day Florida through Louisiana and Texas into California. In thirty-eight brief chapters, Cabeza de Vaca describes the scores of natural and human obstacles they encountered as they made their way across an unknown land. Cabeza de Vaca's gripping account offers a trove of ethnographic information, including descriptions and interpretations of native cultures, making it a powerful precursor to modern anthropology. 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.

The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca

Author: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803278330
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Book Description
This edition of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's Relación offers readers Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz's celebrated translation of Cabeza de Vaca's account of the 1527 Pánfilo de Narváez expedition to North America. The dramatic narrative tells the story of some of the first Europeans and the first-known African to encounter the North American wilderness and its Native inhabitants. It is a fascinating tale of survival against the highest odds, and it highlights Native Americans and their interactions with the newcomers in a manner seldom seen in writings of the period. In this English-language edition, reproduced from their award-winning three-volume set, Adorno and Pautz supplement the engrossing account with a general introduction that orients the reader to Cabeza de Vaca's world. They also provide explanatory notes, which resolve many of the narrative's most perplexing questions. This highly readable translation fires the imagination and illuminates the enduring appeal of Cabeza de Vaca's experience for a modern audience.

The Other Slavery

Author: Andrés Reséndez
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0544602676
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 453

Book Description
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST | WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE. A landmark history—the sweeping story of the enslavement of tens of thousands of Indians across America, from the time of the conquistadors up to the early twentieth century. 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. Reséndez builds the incisive case that it was mass slavery—more than epidemics—that decimated Indian populations across North America. Through riveting new evidence, including testimonies of courageous priests, rapacious merchants, and Indian captives, The Other Slavery reveals nothing less than a key missing piece of American history. For over two centuries we have fought over, abolished, and tried to come to grips with African American slavery. It is time for the West to confront an entirely separate, equally devastating enslavement we have long failed truly to see. “The Other Slavery is nothing short of an epic recalibration of American history, one that’s long overdue...In addition to his skills as a historian and an investigator, Résendez is a skilled storyteller with a truly remarkable subject. This is historical nonfiction at its most important and most necessary.” — Literary Hub, 20 Best Works of Nonfiction of the Decade ““One of the most profound contributions to North American history.”—Los Angeles Times

A Land Remembered

Author: Patrick D Smith
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1561645826
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Book Description
A Land Remembered has become Florida's favorite novel. Now this Student Edition in two volumes makes this rich, rugged story of the American pioneer spirit more accessible to young readers. Patrick Smith tells of three generations of the MacIveys, a Florida family battling the hardships of the frontier. The story opens in 1858, when Tobias and Emma MacIvey arrive in the Florida wilderness with their son, Zech, to start a new life, and ends in 1968 with Solomon MacIvey, who realizes that his wealth has not been worth the cost to the land. Between is a sweeping story rich in Florida history with a cast of memorable characters who battle wild animals, rustlers, Confederate deserters, mosquitoes, starvation, hurricanes, and freezes to carve a kingdom out of the Florida swamp. In this volume, meet young Zech MacIvey, who learns to ride like the wind through the Florida scrub on Ishmael, his marshtackie horse, his dogs, Nip and Tuck, at this side. His parents, Tobias and Emma, scratch a living from the land, gathering wild cows from the swamp and herding them across the state to market. Zech learns the ways of the land from the Seminoles, with whom his life becomes entwined as he grows into manhood. Next in series > > See all of the books in this series

River of Darkness

Author: Buddy Levy
Publisher: Diversion Books
ISBN: 1635769205
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

Book Description
The acclaimed author of Labyrinth of Ice charts the legendary sixteenth-century adventurer’s death-defying navigation of the Amazon River. In 1541, Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro and his lieutenant Francisco Orellana searched for La Canela, South America’s rumored Land of Cinnamon, and the fabled El Dorado, “the golden man.” Quickly, the enormous expedition of mercenaries, enslaved natives, horses, and hunting dogs were decimated through disease, starvation, and attacks in the jungle. Hopelessly lost in the swampy labyrinth, Pizarro and Orellana made the fateful decision to separate. While Pizarro eventually returned home in rags, Orellana and fifty-seven men continued into the unknown reaches of the mighty Amazon jungle and river. Theirs would be the greater glory. Interweaving historical accounts with newly uncovered details, Levy reconstructs Orellana’s journey as the first European to navigate the world’s largest river. Every twist and turn of the powerful Amazon holds new wonders and the risk of death. Levy gives a long-overdue account of the Amazon’s people—some offering sustenance and guidance, others hostile, subjecting the invaders to gauntlets of unremitting attacks and signs of terrifying rituals. Violent and beautiful, noble and tragic, River of Darkness is riveting history and breathtaking adventure that will sweep readers on a voyage unlike any other. Praise for Buddy Levy and River of Darkness “In River of Darkness, Buddy Levy recounts Orellana’s headlong dash down the Amazon. Like Mr. Levy’s last book, Conquistador, about the conquest of Mexico, River of Darkness presents a fast-moving tale of triumph over seemingly insurmountable odds. . . . Though impromptu, the expedition was one of the most amazing adventures of all time.” —Wall Street Journal “An exciting, well-plotted excursion down the Amazon River with the early Spanish conquistador. . . . [A] richly textured account of the rogue, rebel and visionary whose discovery still resonates today.” —Kirkus Reviews “A rollicking adventure . . . Levy successfully conveys the Amazon’s power and majesty, while shedding light on the futility of humanity’s attempt to tame it.” —The A.V. Club

Vuelta

Author: Andrés Reséndez
Publisher: Mariner Books
ISBN: 1328515974
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 309

Book Description
The story of an uncovered voyage as colorful and momentous as any on record for the Age of Discovery--and of the Black mariner whose stunning accomplishment has been until now lost to history It began with a secret mission, no expenses spared. Spain, plotting to break Portugal's monopoly trade with the fabled Orient, set sail from a hidden Mexican port to cross the Pacific--and then, critically, to attempt the never-before-accomplished return, the vuelta. Four ships set out from Navidad, each one carrying a dream team of navigators. The smallest ship, guided by seaman Lope Martín, a mulatto who had risen through the ranks to become one of the most qualified pilots of the era, soon pulled far ahead and became mysteriously lost from the fleet. It was the beginning of a voyage of epic scope, featuring mutiny, murderous encounters with Pacific islanders, astonishing physical hardships--and at last a triumphant return to the New World. But the pilot of the fleet's flagship, the Augustine friar mariner Andrés de Urdaneta, later caught up with Martín to achieve the vuelta as well. It was he who now basked in glory, while Lope Martín was secretly sentenced to be hanged by the Spanish crown as repayment for his services. Acclaimed historian Andrés Reséndez, through brilliant scholarship and riveting storytelling--including an astonishing outcome for the resilient Lope Martín--sets the record straight.

Changing National Identities at the Frontier

Author: Andrés Reséndez
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521543194
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Book Description
This book explores how the diverse and fiercely independent peoples of Texas and New Mexico came to think of themselves as members of one particular national community or another in the years leading up to the Mexican-American War. Hispanics, Native Americans, and Anglo Americans made agonizing and crucial identity decisions against the backdrop of two structural transformations taking place in the region during the first half of the 19th century and often pulling in opposite directions.

The British in India

Author: David Gilmour
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374713243
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 641

Book Description
An immersive portrait of the lives of the British in India, from the seventeenth century to Independence Who of the British went to India, and why? We know about Kipling and Forster, Orwell and Scott, but what of the youthful forestry official, the enterprising boxwallah, the fervid missionary? What motivated them to travel halfway around the globe, what lives did they lead when they got there, and what did they think about it all? Full of spirited, illuminating anecdotes drawn from long-forgotten memoirs, correspondence, and government documents, The British in India weaves a rich tapestry of the everyday experiences of the Britons who found themselves in “the jewel in the crown” of the British Empire. David Gilmour captures the substance and texture of their work, home, and social lives, and illustrates how these transformed across the several centuries of British presence and rule in the subcontinent, from the East India Company’s first trading station in 1615 to the twilight of the Raj and Partition and Independence in 1947. He takes us through remote hill stations, bustling coastal ports, opulent palaces, regimented cantonments, and dense jungles, revealing the country as seen through British eyes, and wittily reveling in all the particular concerns and contradictions that were a consequence of that limited perspective. The British in India is a breathtaking accomplishment, a vivid and balanced history written with brio, elegance, and erudition.

What Strange Paradise

Author: Omar El Akkad
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525657916
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • From the widely acclaimed, bestselling author of American War—a beautifully written, unrelentingly dramatic, and profoundly moving novel that looks at the global refugee crisis through the eyes of a child. "Told from the point of view of two children, on the ground and at sea, the story so astutely unpacks the us-versus-them dynamics of our divided world that it deserves to be an instant classic." —The New York Times Book Review More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another overfilled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives back in their homelands. But miraculously, someone has survived the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who is soon rescued by Vänna. Vänna is a teenage girl, who, despite being native to the island, experiences her own sense of homelessness in a place and among people she has come to disdain. And though Vänna and Amir are complete strangers, though they don’t speak a common language, Vänna is determined to do whatever it takes to save the boy. In alternating chapters, we learn about Amir’s life and how he came to be on the boat, and we follow him and the girl as they make their way toward safety. What Strange Paradise is the story of two children finding their way through a hostile world. But it is also a story of empathy and indifference, of hope and despair—and about the way each of those things can blind us to reality.