Focusing on the duality of colonial and national periods, this book offers a balanced perspective on Latin America's intricate history. By examining key patterns and trends across regions such as the Greater Caribbean, Mexico, the Andes, and Brazil, it highlights the early onset of colonialism and the delayed independence. The regional approach allows for a deeper understanding of the complex historical narrative, making it accessible to readers unfamiliar with the subject.
Among the magnificent gems and jewels left behind by the great Islamic
empires, emeralds stand out for their size and prominence. This title presents
the story of trade and also of transformations - how members of profoundly
different societies at opposite ends of the globe assigned value to a few
thousand pounds of imperfectly shiny green rocks.
This vividly written and authoritative book offers an updated account of the
activities of the best-known conquistadors and explorers, including Columbus,
Cortes, and Pizarro, and reveals the true stories behind the key events in the
history of the Americas.
In 1545, a native Andean prospector hit pay dirt on a desolate red mountain in highland Bolivia. There followed the world's greatest silver bonanza, making the Cerro Rico or "Rich Hill" and the Imperial Villa of Potosí instant legends, famous from Istanbul to Beijing. The Cerro Rico alone provided over half of the world's silver for a century, and even in decline, it remained the single richest source on earth. Potosí is the first interpretive history of the fabled mining city’s rise and fall. It tells the story of global economic transformation and the environmental and social impact of rampant colonial exploitation from Potosí’s startling emergence in the 16th century to its collapse in the 19th. Throughout, Kris Lane’s invigorating narrative offers rare details of this thriving city and its promise of prosperity. A new world of native workers, market women, African slaves, and other ordinary residents who lived alongside the elite merchants, refinery owners, wealthy widows, and crown officials, emerge in lively, riveting stories from the original sources. An engrossing depiction of excess and devastation, Potosí reveals the relentless human tradition in boom times and bust.
This Very Short Introduction examines the Spanish conquistadors who invaded
the Americas in the sixteenth century, as well as the Native American Kingdoms
they invaded.
Focusing on the pivotal year of 1599, this engaging narrative reinterprets the history of Quito and its colonial context. It explores the complexities of sixteenth-century Spanish colonialism through six interconnected themes, highlighting the city's turmoil marked by civil disturbances, shipwrecks, and indigenous uprisings. The book vividly portrays the struggles against pirate attacks, urban decadence, and failed missions, while also examining the resilience and adaptability of the local population in the face of colonial challenges.
Adolf Hitler's obsession with art not only fueled his vision of a purified Nazi state--it was the core of his fascist ideology. Its aftermath lives on to this day.Nazism ascended by brute force and by cultural tyranny. Weimar Germany was a society in turmoil, and Hitler's rise was achieved not only by harnessing the military but also by restricting artistic expression. Hitler, an artist himself, promised the dejected citizens of postwar Germany a purified Reich, purged of "degenerate" influences.When Hitler came to power in 1933, he removed so-called "degenerate" art from German society and promoted artists whom he considered the embodiment of the "Aryan ideal." Artists who had produced challenging and provocative work fled the country. Curators and art dealers organized their stock. Thousands of great artworks disappeared--and only a fraction of them were rediscovered after World War II.In 2013, the German government confiscated roughly 1,300 works by Henri Matisse, George Grosz, Claude Monet, and other masters from the apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, the reclusive son of one of Hitler's primary art dealers. For two years, the government kept the discovery a secret. In Hitler's Last Hostages , Mary M. Lane reveals the fate of those works and tells the definitive story of art in the Third Reich and Germany's ongoing struggle to right the wrongs of the past.
Argues that Blue Moves is Elton John's most interesting and illustrative
album, the one that opens up and helps to explain his explosive career before
the album's release in 1976 and his bumpy yet ultimately stratospheric career
after it--
