History : Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies)

The legacy of Columbus’s discovery of the New World and its subsequent colonization is a current focus of much historical investigation. Columbus himself continues to be a cipher like the signature he crafted for himself, a signature no one has been able to decode. What is certain, however, is that this signature symbolized the construction of a colonial imagery that is still operative and that the consequences of the violent encounter between the European and Amerindian civilizations are now being debated and reinterpreted.Amerindian Images and the Legacy of Columbus examines the constitution of an Amerindian world of resistance against European cultural imperialism. The essays in this volume by literary critics, linguists, semioticians, and historians argue that in the long run the images constructed by the Amerindians to confront the consequences of their encounter with European culture will ensure the endurance of their own culture, that they modified rather than renounced their own imaginary to integrate the material ramifications of their conquest and Westernization. Amerindians in effect became their own Others, and in that process came to understand and accept the substantial alternity of the Other, ultimately realizing the impossibility of absolute assimilation. more...

Price: $90.00

The first intellectual history of the Caribbean written by a top Caribbean studies scholar. The book examines both the work of natives of the region as well as texts interpretive of the region produced by Western authors. Stressing the experimental and cultural particularity of the Caribbean, the study considers four major questions: What art, literature or thought can come from the minds of people who have undergone a catastrophic history? What makes the conceptual paradigms fashioned by the Western Intellectual industry capable of illuminating the distinct experience of Antilleans but not vice versa? Do Antilleans lack the mental endowments required for the interpretation of culture, theirs as well as others? Why cannot the specificity of Caribbean humanity accroach the paradigmatic flair to exemplify the drama of the entire species? more...

Price: $75.00

Anonimo Mexicano is the first publication of the full Nahuatl text and English translation of a rare and important Native history of preconquest Mexico. Written circa 1600 by an anonymous Tlaxcaltecan author, it is an epic account of the settling of central Mexico by Nahua peoples from the northern frontier. They developed a sophisticated culture with powerful city states and an agricultural economy, fought great wars, established dynasties, and recorded their history and legends in painted books. The Mexica became the most powerful of these nations until their conquest by the Spanish with the help of the Tlaxcalteca, who were rivals of the Mexica and whose national origin tale was recorded in Anonimo Mexicano. more...

Price: $34.95

The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia was one of the greatest fighting formations in history: a combination of an outstanding commander and an excellent fighting force. more...

Price: $135.00

'On every page ... there is abundant evidence that the author is not so much concerned about the reputation of the commanding general, as about historical truth. It is needless to say that, investigated in this spirit, both campaigns prove to be total failures... In attempting to fix the responsibility of these defeats, we believe that ... they are invaluable from the fact that they lead people to think of these campaigns, not as an eternal controversy for or against..., but as an epoch of the war in which these officers failed of success, from causes partly within and partly beyond their own control... Histories of the war written in the judicial spirit of nearly all the chapters of those so far published in this series have been looked for, and they will quickly take their place as standards.' -- The Century, vol. 23, issue 4 (Feb 1882). more...

Price: $4.95