America: The Epic Story of Spanish North America, 1433 - 1898 by Robert Goodwin
America: The Epic Story of Spanish North America, 1433 - 1898 by Robert Goodwin
At the conclusion of the American Revolution, in 1783, over half the modern United States was part of the vast Spanish Empire. That story began in 1493, when Columbus claimed Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands for Spain during his second great voyage to the New World. For three hundred years, thousands of proud Spanish conquistadors and their largely forgotten Mexican allies went in search of dreams of "Gold, God, or Glory" from Florida to the Rio Grande, from the Great Plains to California. Many died, few triumphed. Some were cruel, some were curious, some were kind. Missionaries yearned to harvest Indian souls for the Lord through baptism and Christian teaching.
Theirs was a frontier world that Spain struggled to control in the face of Indian resistance and competition from France, Britain, and finally the United States. In the 1800s, Spain lost it all.
Goodwin tells this history through the lives of the people who made it happen and the literature and art with which they celebrated their successes and mourned their failures. He weaves an epic tapestry from these intimate biographies of explorers and conquerors, like Columbus and Coronado, but also lesser known characters, like the powerful Galvez family who gave invaluable and largely forgotten support to the American Patriots during the Revolutionary War; the great Pueblo leader Po'pay; and Esteban, the first documented African American. Like characters in a great play or a novel, Goodwin's protagonists walk the stage of history with heroism and brio and much tragedy.
Bloomsbury Publishing, Hardcover, 1st Edition, 1st Printing, 2019, 519 pages
THIS IS A BRAND NEW BOOK.