The Leading eBooks Store Online
for your Apple or Android device, Nook, Kobo, PC, Mac, Sony Reader...
Most popular at the top
Humanism and Americaby Andrew Fitzmaurice; Quentin Skinner; Lorraine Daston; Dorothy Ross; James Tully
Cambridge University Press 2003; US$ 42.00Humanism and America is the first major study of the impact of Renaissance humanism upon the English colonisation of America. Andrew Fitzmaurice conducts his analysis through an interdisciplinary examination of a broad spectrum of writings, ranging from the works of Thomas More to those of the Virginia Company. more...
Spain and Portugal in the New World, 1492-1700by Lyle N. McAlister
University of Minnesota Press 1980; US$ 60.00A narrative and interpretive history of Spanish and Portuguese exploration, settlement, and colonization of the Americas. more...
Chronicle of the Narvaez Expeditionby Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca; Fanny Bandelier
Penguin Group Inc. 2002; US$ 11.99This 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... more...
Juan Ponce de Leonby Louise Chipley Slavicek
Infobase Publishing 2003; US$ 30.00While searching for the fountain of youth, Ponce de Leon became the first European to reach what is now the state of Florida. more...
The Discovery of Guianaby Sir Walter Raleigh
The Floating Press 1753; US$ 4.99At the turn of the 17th century, English writer and explorer Sir Walter Scott read an account of a great golden city in South America. He set out to explore the area, now Venezuela, and on his return he published The Discovery of Guiana . He is considered to have greatly exaggerated his findings, and his work contributed to the El Dorado legend. more...
Jacques Cartierby Adam Woog
Infobase Publishing 2009; US$ 36.00A biography about the first explorer to establish a French presence in North America, an accomplishment that allowed the next generation of French sailors to create the first settlements in Canada. more...
Marvelous Possessionsby Stephen Greenblatt
University of Chicago Press 2010; US$ 22.50Marvelous Possessions is a study of the ways in which Europeans of the late Middle Ages and the early modern period represented non-European peoples and took possession of their lands, in particular the New World. In a series of innovative readings of travel narratives, judicial documents, and official reports, Stephen Greenblatt shows that the experience of the marvelous, central to both art and philosophy, was cunningly yoked by Columbus and others to the service of colonial appropriation. He argues that the traditional symbolic actions and legal rituals through which European sovereignty was asserted were strained to the breaking point by the unprecedented nature of the discovery of the New World. But the book also shows that the experience... more...
The Search for Mabilaby Vernon J. Knight; Neal G. Lineback; Alan Knight; Linda Derry; Eugene M. Wilson; John E. Worth; Ned Jenkins; George E. Lankford; Robbie Ethridge; Kathryn E. Holland Braund; Neil G. Lineback; Lawrence Clayton; Amanda L. Regnier; Michael D. Murphy; Gregory A. Waselkov; Craig T. Sheldon Jr; Douglas E. Jones
The University of Alabama Press 2009; US$ 30.36One of the most profound events in sixteenth-century North America was a ferocious battle between the Spanish army of Hernando de Soto and a larger force of Indian warriors under the leadership of a feared chieftain named Tascalusa. The site of this battle was a small fortified border town within an Indian province known as Mabila. Although the Indians were defeated, the battle was a decisive blow to Spanish plans for the conquest and settlement of what is now the southeastern United States. For in that battle, De Soto’s army lost its baggage, including all proofs of the richness of the land—proofs that would be necessary to attract future colonists. Facing such a severe setback, De Soto led his army once more into the interior... more...
La Florida del Inca and the Struggle for Social Equality in Colonial Spanish Americaby Jonathan D. Steigman
The University of Alabama Press 2005; US$ 15.96A cross-disciplinary view of an important De Soto chronicle. Among the early Spanish chroniclers who contributed to popular images of the New World was the Amerindian-Spanish (mestizo) historian and literary writer, El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (1539-1616). He authored several works, of which La Florida del Inca (1605) stands out as the best because of its unique Amerindian and European perspectives on the De Soto expedition (1539-1543). As the child of an Indian mother and a Spanish father, Garcilaso lived in both worlds--and saw value in each. Hailed throughout Europe for his excellent contemporary Renaissance writing style, his work was characterized as literary art. Garcilaso revealed the emotions, struggles, and conflicts... more...
The Conquistadorsby Matthew Restall; Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
Oxford University Press, USA 2011; US$ 9.95With startling speed, Spanish conquistadors invaded hundreds of Native American kingdoms, took over the mighty empires of the Aztecs and Incas, and initiated an unprecedented redistribution of the world's resources and balance of power. They changed the course of history, but the myth they established was even stranger than their real achievements. This Very Short Introduction deploys the latest scholarship to shatter and replace the traditional narrative. Chapters explore New World civilizations prior to the invasions, the genesis of conquistador culture on both sides of the Atlantic, the roles black Africans and Native Americans played, and the consequences of the invasions. The book reveals who the conquistadors were and what made their... more...









