This is an incredible book for anyone interested in the abolition of slavery.

Christopher Schmidt-Nowara has written an excellent book to understand the process that led to the abolition of slavery in the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean, taking into account the latest developments in Cuban, Puertorrican, and Spanish history. This is an important new viewpoint: to understand the nineteenth-century history of Cuba and Puerto Rico it's necessary to have a fine understanding of Spain's colonial policy and the socio-economic links that these two colonies established with the metropolis. I consider this book a major break through, a very important book for any person interested in the history of the Caribbean, Latin America and/or Spain.

This most innovative of novels is about an instant. While, in the Rue de l'Odeon, Dr. Farabeuf executes an erotic-chirurgical rite, the couple (one couple) remember the moment of execution by torture of a Chinese man in 1901, immortalized in a photograph. Farabeuf's lover assumes herself as the tortured Chinese (who is also Christ), making torture the equivalent of ardent love: the fusion of extreme pain and extreme pleasure.

"What??!!" you'll ask yourself. Don't worry, in this experimental novel the plot is only a vehicle for "pure" literature: a game with words, in an extremely sophisticated fashion. This book is a constant mirror-game of identities, places and times, but in the end it's not more than the "chronicle of an instant": the moment identities merge and ends meet.

This novel is extremely intelligently written, told in a time at the same time isolated from its course but recurring. Everything develops around the moment in which "she" runs to the window and as she passes her foot hits the leg of the iron table over which Dr. Farabeuf has the tools to execute his erotic-chirurgical rite. Filled with multiple solutions, this consummate literary trick is a clinical, almost scientific elaboration with words. Only for real lovers of serious (not necessarily boring) literature. PS: and it shows that Mexican literature is not only "magical realism" or bananas with pineapples.

Salvador Elizondo belongs to the alternative Mexican literature that has nothing to do with magical realism. Farabeuf is his masterpiece. The novel centers on a series of theories exposed by Georges Bataille to create a misterious story closely related to the French movement of "Nouveau Roman". The book has an outstanding control of atmosphere that keeps the reader hooked to its mystery. Also, readers my be interested in the slow revealing of an absolutely misterious and complex plot. The book is the result of one of the obscure readers of Borges. The novel is not a weekend entertainment and it is only for those who look in literature an experience beyond fun. Philosophically, the novel is absolutely fascinating and if it can be accompanied by the reading of Bataille's "History of the eye", the intellectual challenge and experience is nearly impossible to match. It is also highly recommendable to use this book as an introduction to the Mexican generation of Casa del Lago and to other obscure authors (in the best sense of the term) such as Juan Garcia Ponce or Ines Arredondo).

So THIS is why Franco was able to rule for 39 years! Payne has done a fantastic job of explaining how Primo de Rivera could come to power, fall, then nine years later Franco could become Spain's "Caudillo". Payne's detailed account makes one feel as though they have experienced what it was like in Spain from the beginning of Primo de Rivera's dictatorship to the restoration of democratic institutions in 1977. Overall, a good read.

I have not read this book yet, but I intend to buy it soon. I have to call attention to an error in the online book review -- Francisco Franco died Nov, 20, 1975, not in 1977. Spain's first free elctions in decades were held June 15, 1977.

This September will mark my 6th visit to the Iberian Peninsula. You can easily outline a wonderful car trip using this book alone. It is very straightforward and very honest and the only guidebook that you will need to purchase. You can write to the Spanish Tourist Office for a wonderful map which will have the location of all the paradores and pousadas clearly indicated. Book and map in hand, and you are halfway there. The Spanish and Portugese people have to be among the most gracious people in the world. Use this book wisely, and seek out the less well known regions of Spain. You won't be disapointed. Viva la Espana!

Not only paradors and pousadas but also alternatives. I like the ink drawings showing the paradors. Very detailed section maps.

I have this book and several other Spanish language books. This is the best of the lot. It has a dictionary of most common words, a useful phase section with pronunciation and useful information about Spain and Latin America. It is worth every bit of the price. Es muy bueno.

I picked this up before a trip to Guadalajara, and it really came in handy. It was simple to use and full of exactly the words I was looking for. I practiced with the cassettes on the plane, and then I brought the phrasebook everywhere - shopping, sightseeing, eating out, and (unfortunately) to the pharmacy for, um, an emergency. It even helped me there, although I wish the situation to test that particular area of usefulness hadn't come up. Really a great buy and a fantastic way to stretch those two years of high school Spanish I barely remember.

Elyn Aviva has written an excellent book on walking the Camino. She includes the human interest angle as well as interesting info about the history, cultural aspects, and architecture. The fact that her walk was in 1982, before the Camino became the popular pilgrimage route it is now, is quite interesting. I consider this book to be a great addition to my growing library of books on this subject.

This account of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, made in 1982, before the current resurgence, contains everything you need to know about history, architecture, myth and legend along the ancient route across northern Spain and more. It is a personal account, but one chock full of customs and lore, as well as facts and individual musings on the nature of pilgrimage and what drives a pilgrim to leave home and hearth to trek 500 miles to the medieval end of the world.

Elyn tells her story with humor and pathos and ask the reader to consider just what the pilgrimage route and the symbols contained therein might really mean for today's pilgrims. It is, after all, both an inner and outer journey.

John Hanson Mitchell recounts his travels by bike from Southern Spain through France and England finally ending up in Scotland all the while musing on the sun and the indelible mark it has left on our culture. The book is part travelogue, part philosophical musing, part anthropological study, part religious mediation. The accounts of the people and places he encountered are compelling and his descriptions of the food he ate along the way made me very hungry! It all adds up to a thought-provoking and entertaining read.

A couple of quibbles: It would have been great if there was a map included with the book that showed the route traveled. Mitchell writes eloquently about the geography and it's hard to visualize it without having a map handy (unless of course you are very familiar with the regions he's writing about). I also found it somewhat disturbing that it wasn't clear when exactly this journey took place. The book came out last year or the year before,but it seems that the actual trip took place long ago.

Whoever wrote that review that you say was in Publisher's Weekly obviously never read anything by John Hanson Mitchell! They must be confusing him with some other author. Mitchell's writing is always so good-hearted and generous--the opposite of caustic!
Following the Sun is so rich--a journey on two levels; a review of virtually everything under the sun, from myth to bird migration to the solar origins of Christianity. But it's also a delightful bicycle ride--all the way from the south of Spain to the Outer Hebrides in Scotland with journeys throughout the vineyards of Bordeaux, the chateaux of the Loire in France and the stone circles of the British Isles in between. Mitchell always has a way of falling in with eccebntric types, as I've seen in his other books eg. Ceremonial Time (a 15,000 year history of one square mile of land)and The Wildest Place on Earth (about Italian gardens and the American wilderness). He seems to be able to mix arcane facts about the setting of sugar in winegrapes, and the perversities of Roman emperors and the like with a sharp ear for story. There are some great ones here with some rollicking Old World characters. The author followed back roads all the way, and he did it before the establishment of the European Union when all the food was better, the wine sweeter, and the stories deeper. And Mitchell's writing style, lyrical and smooth, is a salve for whatever ails you. What a pleasure!

Geoffrey Parker's study of Philip II is a landmark. In this penetrating analysis, Parker has successfully distilled and tied together four decades of modern scholarship on strategy, decision making, and organization theory with an original evaluation of Philip of Spain's motivations, priorities, and execution. Gone are the nationalistic generalizations and the structural excuses. Structural and institutional factors get coverage, but the real story is in the man at the top, who had to make the decisions, good and bad.

Parker starts with a discussion on the strategic culture surrounding Philip, to include his "strategic inheritence" from his father, Charles V, the massive information network over which Philip presided (and the irresistable temptation to micro-manage), and the 'messianic imperialism' context that was of Philip's own making.

Messianic imperialism is the backbone for the rest of the book, which deals with the formation and the execution of grand strategy. Parker clearly evaluates Philip's strategy v. the Dutch and the English. For reasons that he explained early in his preface, the Mediterranean theater gets shorter coverage, but it is clear that the Med. concerns were never far from Philip's mind. The French Huguenots also don't get as detailed treatment as they could have gotten, but Parker's summation of the results of Philip's policy towards France is still satisfying.

Parker makes many allusions to strategic and policy issues of the recent past, and it is clear that Philip's problems were not all the different in scope, if not in scale, than those faced by political and military leaders today. Philip's inability to discipline himself to focus on one event to see it through to completion, his inabiltiy to keep himself from micromanaging decisions from over 600 miles away, and his inability to see past his divine mission to perceive reality will all strike familiar chords.

Bottom line: Great history, great interpretation, great analysis. It has got to be a classic in the field.

Some people still insist military tactics apply to business. Once I took a public relations course, and our textbook was Clausewitz's treaty on war. If you want to avoid mistakes, to design a sound and practical strategy for whatever your business, then read Geoffrey Parker. In this book, Philip II is judged through the lenses of planning, and most importantly, of results and achievements. Why did Philip failed in his great enterprise? To make decisions is not only a matter of information -Philip was well informed of affairs- but of judgement, passion, and careful coordination with those who execute decisions.

This two-volume series was my inroduction to Paul Horgan who became one of my favorite authors. It is interesting to note he and Frank Waters ('the Man who Killed the Deer') died recently just two weeks apart. They were both 92, and among the greatest authors who dealt with the Rio Grande. Mr. Hogan's dedication to detail set him apart from Willa Cather whose fame rests upon her book 'Death comes to the Archbishop,' using Lamy as her subject. She rejected the aproach of Paul Horgan who at the time was writing his own history, 'Lamy of Santa Fe.' Willa Cather was a novelist; Paul Horgan an historian, and of the two I prefer the truth. Anyone interested in the history of the Rio Grande will be delighted with Paul Horgan's two-volume introduction to it.

One of the major materpieces of American historical writing. The two volumes are a continuing delight, far better than any historical novel. Scene succeds scene, filled with movement, passion and unbelievable heroism. Won the Pulitzer and Bancroft Prizes for History, and is considered the greatest history of the Rio Grande from pre-Columbian time to mid 20th century.

In his "History of the Conquest of Mexico" and it's companion volume, the "History of the Conquest of Peru", William Prescott achieves the remarkable feat of portraying the action and adventures of the Spanish cavaliers in a highly readable format for those with little prior knowledge of the Conquests. The subject matter for these books is basically the clash of cultures that occurred between the Old World (in the form of Catholic Spain) and the New (in the form of the Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas in Peru). It is interesting to note that these books were written by in the early 19th century by a partially sighted American author who had never visited the countries but who had access to all available historical documents. The style of writing is such that the reader is never overwhelmed by detail and is continually impressed by the heroic feats of the Spanish and at the same time shocked by their cruelty to the indigenous poeples.

In the "History of the Conquest of Mexico", Prescott provides an excellent acount of the origin and nature of Mexican civilization at the time of the conquest, describing how the Aztecs dominated the many races of Mexico with savage brutality, indulging in regular human sacrifices. He then goes on to describe the key player in this adventure, Hernando Cortes, and how he and a small party of cavaliers overcame overwhelming odds to defeat the armies of the Aztecs. While it is impossible not to admire the genius of Cortes, the reader is left in no doubt that the Spaniards were motivated by the promise of Aztec gold and not by the desire to "spread the word of God to the heathen". However, Prescott excuses the means by which Cortes overthrew the Aztec empire as it put an end to the Aztec practice of human sacrifice. In the second book, "History of the Conquest of Peru", Prescott finds no excuse for the manner in which Pizarro and Almagro conquered the relatively peaceful empire of the Incas. As with the first book, an interesting description of the Inca way of life precedes the action. While equally enthralling as the conquest of Mexico, Pizzaro accomplished the overthrow of the Incas by brute force, without the finesse of Cortes. The second half of this book deals with the remarkable events which followed the conquest; the two civil wars and their resolution by Pedro de la Gasca on behalf of the Spanish crown. It is difficult to find fault with Prescott's scientific approach to his writings; all of the events are backed up by references to documents written at the time of, or shortly after the conquests and these are given as valuable footnotes on each page. In addition, at the end of some of the chapters, Prescott writes short essays about his sources, describing which are trustworthy and which are prejudiced. If there were to be a fault with Prescott's approach, then it would his sympathy with the Catholic church during the years of the Conquest and his excusing of the Spanish atrocities as a means of spreading Christianity. But then we should bear in mind that Prescott was writing in the 1840s and was obviously a serious Christian. A second problem is that some of the footnotes are left in their original text, i.e. Spanish, Latin or sometimes Greek which presents problems to non-polyglots. The publishers have obviously not thought to translate these. In conclusion, these two books are essential reading for anyone interested in the empires of the Aztecs and Incas, and their overthrow by the Spanish Conquestadors. I have not read any other books on the subject which compare to Prescott's masterpieces.

Prescott shows why Cortes stands beside Alexander the III as a leader of epic campaigns; and he knows that, as with Alexander, there is more substance to the story than more 'pure-bred' academic historians will allow. This book also, obliquely, sheds light on U.S. American history in ways the reader may not expect from the title. Prescott does for America south of the Rio Grande what Francis Parkman (another great, unknown American historian) does for the northern forests. The works of both are treasures to be mined.