The Conquest of America

by Tzvetan Todorov and Todorov

Book Overview

A fascinating study of cultural confrontation in the New World, with implications far beyond sixteenth-century America, The Conquest of America has become a classic in its field. It offers an original interpretation of the discovery of America by Columbus and of the subsequent conquest, colonization, and destruction of Mexico and the Caribbean by the Spaniards at the beginning of the modern era.Using sixteenth-century sources, the distinguished French...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060912146
• ISBN13: 9780060912147
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A brief recommendation

Previous reviewers have been relatively thorough therefore I don't have much of value to add. Suffice to say that this is one of the best books I've ever read. For any student of human behavior I say it's a "must read" ...on many levels.

Densely intellectual, but thought provoking

This study of cultural confrontation between the Spanish and the Indian peoples of Central America and the Caribbean, subtitled "The Question of the Other," is a true work of scholarship. The author, who has read deeply into primary sources in Spanish, explains the intellectual questions he is addressing, particularly concerning cross-cultural communication and the use of symbols. He concludes that the Spanish advantage lay more in those areas than it did in military technology. While the book is predictably critical of Spanish treatment of the Indians, it also persuades the reader that Hernan Cortez was a very clever man. Illustrations from the period are interspersed throughout the text. This book requires sustained attention, and is not for the casual reader. Michael Michaud, Vienna, Austria

terrific

This book show me the spetacular thinking of azthecs indians, the conquerors,and gives me many ansewrs about how the spanishs dominated the indians