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The Americas
A history of North, South and Central America, from prehistory to the present, by one of the world's best-known historians.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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386 people want to read
About the author
Felipe Fernández-Armesto
129 books182 followersFelipe Fernández-Armesto is a British professor of history at the University of Notre Dame and author of several popular works, notably on cultural and environmental history.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
September 4, 2012
Professor Fernández-Armesto's book attempts to be a number of things, primarily a popular treatment of the comparative history of the American supercontinent. It seeks to poke holes in certain old sentiments of "Americanness," but comes off as smug and elitist in a number of ways, while remaining sadly far behind contemporary scholarship. While some readers might appreciate a reduction of more complex arguments regarding geographic determinism - like those found in Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel - or other interesting topics, I found Fernández-Armesto's tone to be flip and his decanting of these theories and arguments to be factually inaccurate in places and often hostile. His dismissive attitude towards Mesoamerican language (he blithely ignores the entire corpus of Nahua poetics while discussing literacy in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica), his mystification of cultural and technological diffusion in the Americas, and his baffling hostility towards North American Indians, their cultural perspectives and achievements were, frankly, bizarre. The fact that this book maintains a precarious position as a critique of "North American" exceptionalism (i.e. the U.S. and - to a lesser extent - Canada) while maintaining a tone of Eurocentric and academic autocracy (how dare that uppity Cree Ph.D. student question Hugh Brody?). All in all, i found this book to be remarkably frustrating, and though there are some good general sections to it, they are all the ones in which Professor Fernández-Armesto's authorial voice is not heard at all. A good, general, comparative hemispheric history of the Americas is a great idea - however, this is not a great execution of that idea.
June 4, 2009
As I’m apparently the only person in the US that gets slightly offended when the term “American” is used solely to represent us/US gringos (I’ve asked numerous South American friends and oddly they don’t seem to give a crap), I really enjoyed this book. Part of the pleasure comes from the author’s ability to condense the thick history of the post-Columbian Americas into just over 200 pages, yet it comes off as quite comprehensive.
The effusive writing reeks of an Iberian intellectual, yet his weaving of large historical generalities with specific details [Jefferson hanging painted buffalo hides and “savage” Tennessee carvings in Monticello’s atrium:] was most effective. His hope is a reunification of North and South into simply “that hemisphere” as apparently it was originally perceived by the Old World. He offers something of an historical balance as the southern Americas were, until the late nineteenth century, clearly the dominate half. The North (for his sake of argument, territories lying north of the Rio Grande) was a mere colonial backwater comparatively. Of course with the onslaught of industrialization in the north, coupled with certain sociopolitical fallout in the south, the power shifted to our current state. Offering an historical balance of both general periods, he seeks a perceptual equality across the Hemisphere that potentially could signal a real economic/productive/political equilibrium in the future.
Strangely, when he arrives at “The American Century” he, himself, falls into the trap of referring to the US as “America” and US citizens exclusively as “Americans.” I was nonplussed. Nonetheless a very engaging read.
The effusive writing reeks of an Iberian intellectual, yet his weaving of large historical generalities with specific details [Jefferson hanging painted buffalo hides and “savage” Tennessee carvings in Monticello’s atrium:] was most effective. His hope is a reunification of North and South into simply “that hemisphere” as apparently it was originally perceived by the Old World. He offers something of an historical balance as the southern Americas were, until the late nineteenth century, clearly the dominate half. The North (for his sake of argument, territories lying north of the Rio Grande) was a mere colonial backwater comparatively. Of course with the onslaught of industrialization in the north, coupled with certain sociopolitical fallout in the south, the power shifted to our current state. Offering an historical balance of both general periods, he seeks a perceptual equality across the Hemisphere that potentially could signal a real economic/productive/political equilibrium in the future.
Strangely, when he arrives at “The American Century” he, himself, falls into the trap of referring to the US as “America” and US citizens exclusively as “Americans.” I was nonplussed. Nonetheless a very engaging read.
June 28, 2012
I picked this up under the assumption that it would be a light, narrative-style pop history of the Americas. Instead I found philosophically-based essays in which the author made strong assumptions about the reader's knowledge base (not all accurate in my case, unfortunately-- not that that's the author's fault) and routinely dropped five-to-seven-syllable gobstoppers like patrimonialism and embourgeoisement. Not a bad book, per se, but contrary to my expectations and therefore disappointing.
April 20, 2014
I originally came in contact with this book while TAing for a year-long course on the history of "The Americas." As a companion book to the course, this book is useful, as it is short and easy-to-read. However, to read on its own, it just isn't my cup of tea. I kept wondering why he would go on for two pages about one subject and then seemingly forget about other details that I would consider important. I understand that these criticisms are largely unfair because the writing of such a slim volume on such a large geographic area and time period would be highly difficult, decisions on what to mention and what to skip over being innumerable.
I'm sure others would enjoy this book much more than I did, and thus, I still recommend that people give it a go. It is a quick read after all.
I'm sure others would enjoy this book much more than I did, and thus, I still recommend that people give it a go. It is a quick read after all.
February 17, 2013
Really a great introduction to the hemispheric approach to American history, perfect for teaching and for those who don't have much background in the history of the hemisphere. I wanted to rate it higher, but there were several oddities that made me feel like he wasn't as well versed in the literature as he needed to be, which then made me doubt stuff that I don't have an expertise in. (E.g., he underplays the significance of the post-contact demographic catastrophe; has a simplistic definition of Empire; claims that the U.S. abandoned empire building after WWI; etc.). Still recommend it, but was less enthusiastic by the end.
May 23, 2012
Read the entire book in a day for AP World History.
Didn't remember a single thing. :)
Didn't remember a single thing. :)
December 19, 2016
Comprehensive, informative, thoughtful including narratives beyond common ways of thinking about The Americas. I found it incredibly boring.
August 27, 2015
In a world of specialists, generalists are usually underappreciated and histories of entire continents are a rarity, but fortunately that is starting to change with the decline of narrow nationalistic histories in favour of advances in transnational studies, as well as the current fad of sweeping histories-of-everything swabbed on big canvasses. That is not to say that Fernández-Armesto does a shoddy job: on the contrary, his tale of the reversal of the magnetic pole of fortune that defined success in the Americas since the precolonial era, though it does have the world-weariness of the veteran historian tired of debunking myths, is nevertheless told with the pace and spicing of the raconteur fully at home with his topic.
He does end on a rather wistful note – that people tend to believe in historical myths that by sheer virtue of their propagation gain the weight of truth, rather than in historical truths – but he has adjusted some of my preconceptions and shattered several of my prejudices regarding the uneven state of development across the continent. Or is it continents? – And that is where he begins, with an exploration about whether there are truly two Americas or rather one, concluding that for the early explorers, the New World was seen as a whole, a whole that expanded dramatically beyond their initial expectations of finding a few spice-bearing islands.
He deals with the remarkable early human settlements, particularly the two-way traffic between Asia and Alaska when the Bering Strait for some 60,000 ice-bound years offered a land bridge, and the question of the variety of environments in which this occurred, noting that until the 18th Century, the North American Great Plains were sterile vacancies, while civilisations rose in the Amazon jungle. He rushes through the human-driven extinctions of what could have been domesticable species (this was long before Chief Seattle’s famous reported words of earth-husbandry), and into the domestication of maize, squash and beans in particular, then settles down like the ancient Mezoamericans and Andeans to discuss in more detail the rise of the early city-states and empires.
Seized practically intact by Hernando Cortéz, the Aztec Empire and others like it, with a significant overlay of Iberian culture and architecture, laid the foundation for the spectacular wealth of colonial Spain and Portugal: and not just in gold and silver, for great universities were established, and women writers like the poet Sor Juana de la Cruz came to prominence in what is today Mexico in the 1500s, while Brazil’s world-influencing artists in the 1700s included slave-born blacks like Manuel da Cunha and mulattos like Aleijadhino, while North Americans languished as trappers and fishermen unconcerned with the arts. This focus on the arts is welcome as it is an often-missing element in most histories, yet gives insight into the hearts of peoples. I visited Seville in Andalusia last year, and marvelled at its palaces representing Spain’s colonial possessions: it is hard today to find traces of that pre-eminence.
I won’t spoil the read by revealing Fernández-Armesto’s key thesis on why the fortunes of the North later eclipsed those of the South, but he comes into his own discussing the similarities between the “two” Americas and is particularly revealing when tackling the racist myths of inherent Anglo-Saxon supremacy via the supposed virtues of Protestant industriousness over the supposedly indolent Catholic Latins (“Hot tempers, hot peppers and hot weather seem well-matched,” he quips sardonically). He debunks these notions by, for instance, showing that Catholicism is today the largest confession in the USA, while Protestants have more priests than Catholics in Brazil, and by noting the non-Latin heritage of much of “Latin” America – Belize, Jamaica, Bermuda and much of the Caribbean, Surinam and the Guyanas, not to mention the huge Japanese presence in Brazil, or the significant Welsh and German influences on the Argentines, or the two centuries of British dominance in Chile – and the Latinisation of much of the US South-West.
He also refreshingly overturns convention by posing North American culture as communalist (even proto-socialist in its frontier era), while posing Latin American culture as individualist (though he mistakenly includes a proclivity towards anarchism – for the first two decades of the 20th Century, the region’s leading industrial organising force – in this formula). I fear he does not tackle what fellow British historian Niall Ferguson in his book Civilisation: The West and the Rest, claims is one of the defining differences between the North and the South: universal access to land-ownership by frontier farmers in the North (in dispossessing the Native Americans) meant the North was able to escape the trap of the South’s latifundistas who to this day hold most of the arable land, while the majority work it for them. But he does deal with the manner in which Native American near-extinction in the North created a huge labour hunger that drove massive European immigration into the North in the 19th Century which transformed the Great Plains into the bread basket of the world, while much of Latin America’s indigenes were retained as ranch and plantation labour and the frontier – especially the jungles, oceans and tundra – remained under-exploited.
In sum it’s a concise, very approachable – and at many points very quotable – introduction to a great and complex topic that pokes holes in many hot-air assumptions, misconceptions and deliberate distortions about this unequal, yet Siamese-twinned continent.
He does end on a rather wistful note – that people tend to believe in historical myths that by sheer virtue of their propagation gain the weight of truth, rather than in historical truths – but he has adjusted some of my preconceptions and shattered several of my prejudices regarding the uneven state of development across the continent. Or is it continents? – And that is where he begins, with an exploration about whether there are truly two Americas or rather one, concluding that for the early explorers, the New World was seen as a whole, a whole that expanded dramatically beyond their initial expectations of finding a few spice-bearing islands.
He deals with the remarkable early human settlements, particularly the two-way traffic between Asia and Alaska when the Bering Strait for some 60,000 ice-bound years offered a land bridge, and the question of the variety of environments in which this occurred, noting that until the 18th Century, the North American Great Plains were sterile vacancies, while civilisations rose in the Amazon jungle. He rushes through the human-driven extinctions of what could have been domesticable species (this was long before Chief Seattle’s famous reported words of earth-husbandry), and into the domestication of maize, squash and beans in particular, then settles down like the ancient Mezoamericans and Andeans to discuss in more detail the rise of the early city-states and empires.
Seized practically intact by Hernando Cortéz, the Aztec Empire and others like it, with a significant overlay of Iberian culture and architecture, laid the foundation for the spectacular wealth of colonial Spain and Portugal: and not just in gold and silver, for great universities were established, and women writers like the poet Sor Juana de la Cruz came to prominence in what is today Mexico in the 1500s, while Brazil’s world-influencing artists in the 1700s included slave-born blacks like Manuel da Cunha and mulattos like Aleijadhino, while North Americans languished as trappers and fishermen unconcerned with the arts. This focus on the arts is welcome as it is an often-missing element in most histories, yet gives insight into the hearts of peoples. I visited Seville in Andalusia last year, and marvelled at its palaces representing Spain’s colonial possessions: it is hard today to find traces of that pre-eminence.
I won’t spoil the read by revealing Fernández-Armesto’s key thesis on why the fortunes of the North later eclipsed those of the South, but he comes into his own discussing the similarities between the “two” Americas and is particularly revealing when tackling the racist myths of inherent Anglo-Saxon supremacy via the supposed virtues of Protestant industriousness over the supposedly indolent Catholic Latins (“Hot tempers, hot peppers and hot weather seem well-matched,” he quips sardonically). He debunks these notions by, for instance, showing that Catholicism is today the largest confession in the USA, while Protestants have more priests than Catholics in Brazil, and by noting the non-Latin heritage of much of “Latin” America – Belize, Jamaica, Bermuda and much of the Caribbean, Surinam and the Guyanas, not to mention the huge Japanese presence in Brazil, or the significant Welsh and German influences on the Argentines, or the two centuries of British dominance in Chile – and the Latinisation of much of the US South-West.
He also refreshingly overturns convention by posing North American culture as communalist (even proto-socialist in its frontier era), while posing Latin American culture as individualist (though he mistakenly includes a proclivity towards anarchism – for the first two decades of the 20th Century, the region’s leading industrial organising force – in this formula). I fear he does not tackle what fellow British historian Niall Ferguson in his book Civilisation: The West and the Rest, claims is one of the defining differences between the North and the South: universal access to land-ownership by frontier farmers in the North (in dispossessing the Native Americans) meant the North was able to escape the trap of the South’s latifundistas who to this day hold most of the arable land, while the majority work it for them. But he does deal with the manner in which Native American near-extinction in the North created a huge labour hunger that drove massive European immigration into the North in the 19th Century which transformed the Great Plains into the bread basket of the world, while much of Latin America’s indigenes were retained as ranch and plantation labour and the frontier – especially the jungles, oceans and tundra – remained under-exploited.
In sum it’s a concise, very approachable – and at many points very quotable – introduction to a great and complex topic that pokes holes in many hot-air assumptions, misconceptions and deliberate distortions about this unequal, yet Siamese-twinned continent.
March 8, 2022
This is not a history of the Americas. IT IS a treatise on why North America, with less natural resources, became a dominant international business leader and global political power whereas Mid and South America, far more endowed with natural resources, failed on the international stage and are really 2nd world states. The book assumes you already know the history of America. This is therefore not a book for the novice, nor is it a good starting place as a first introduction to history of the American Continent.
I'm a fan of the history of South America ... but I didn't find this book at all engaging; it failed hopelessly in increasing my knowledge with regard to America as a whole. I found Armesto's arguments on why one the North became a world power and the South disappeared into the second division not very cohesive; none of the chapters, to my eyes, had any focus.
It is clear South America chose to be a supplier of raw materials for others to process. Landowners in the South exploited cheap (and slave) labour instead of investing in machinery and manufacturing. North America, however, who at one point did use cheap and slave labour, at one point did look to the long haul and did invest in technology and manufacturing. South America never really took that step. North America was more far-sighted; simple as that really.
Armesto dismisses the Latin temperament as anything to do with the predicament of South America; to my eyes, it has all to do with it. North Americans took the long-term view when investing; Latin America took the short-term gain approach and didn't invest. Simple as that - no great mystery.
I didn't find any of his theses stirred much interest. I'm assuming Felipe Fernandez Armesto is South American himself (?) and it would seem he wanted to rebalance how South American development history is viewed by the world (... mainly by Europeans and North Americans... not sure who his audience is?).
I found the whole book meandered without a clear overall objective. To be honest, even though each chapter had a headline, I couldn't find any theme maintained in any of them. The whole book seemed a random stream of consciousness to me.
However, you always learn something in any book. Up to now, I thought of maroon as purely a colour; Armesto introduced me to a meaning of it I never knew of. However, a disappointing read overall.
Merged review:
This is not a history of the Americas. IT IS a treatise on why North America, with less natural resources, became a dominant international business leader and global political power whereas Mid and South America, far more endowed with natural resources, failed on the international stage and are really 2nd class states. The book assumes you already know the history of America. This is therefore not a book for the novice, nor is it a good starting place as an introduction to the history of the American Continent.
I'm a fan of the history of South America ... but I didn't find this book at all engaging; it failed hopelessly in increasing my knowledge with regard to America as a whole. I found Armesto's arguments ... on why the North became a world power and the South disappeared into the second division ... not very cohesive; none of the chapters, to my eyes, had any focus.
It is clear South America chose to be a supplier of raw materials and allow others to process them. Landowners in the South exploited cheap (and slave) labour without ever investing in machinery and manufacturing. North America, however, who at one point did use cheap and slave labour, in late 19th century, look to the long view and did invest in technology and manufacturing. South America never really took that step, or took it too late. North America was more far-sighted; simple as that really.
Armesto dismisses the Latin temperament as anything to do with the predicament of South America; to my eyes, it has all to do with it. North Americans took the long-term view when investing; Latin Americans took the short-term gain approach and didn't invest. Simple as that - no great mystery.
I didn't find any of his theses stirred much interest. I'm assuming Felipe Fernandez Armesto is South American himself (?) and it would seem he wanted to rebalance how South American development history is viewed by the world (... mainly by Europeans and North Americans, I suspect ... not sure who his audience is?).
I found the whole book meandered, without a clear overall objective. To be honest, even though each chapter had a headline, I couldn't find any theme maintained in any of them. The whole book seemed a random stream of consciousness to me.
However, you always learn something in any book. Up to now, I thought of maroon as purely a colour; Armesto introduced me to a meaning I never knew of. However, a disappointing read overall.
I'm a fan of the history of South America ... but I didn't find this book at all engaging; it failed hopelessly in increasing my knowledge with regard to America as a whole. I found Armesto's arguments on why one the North became a world power and the South disappeared into the second division not very cohesive; none of the chapters, to my eyes, had any focus.
It is clear South America chose to be a supplier of raw materials for others to process. Landowners in the South exploited cheap (and slave) labour instead of investing in machinery and manufacturing. North America, however, who at one point did use cheap and slave labour, at one point did look to the long haul and did invest in technology and manufacturing. South America never really took that step. North America was more far-sighted; simple as that really.
Armesto dismisses the Latin temperament as anything to do with the predicament of South America; to my eyes, it has all to do with it. North Americans took the long-term view when investing; Latin America took the short-term gain approach and didn't invest. Simple as that - no great mystery.
I didn't find any of his theses stirred much interest. I'm assuming Felipe Fernandez Armesto is South American himself (?) and it would seem he wanted to rebalance how South American development history is viewed by the world (... mainly by Europeans and North Americans... not sure who his audience is?).
I found the whole book meandered without a clear overall objective. To be honest, even though each chapter had a headline, I couldn't find any theme maintained in any of them. The whole book seemed a random stream of consciousness to me.
However, you always learn something in any book. Up to now, I thought of maroon as purely a colour; Armesto introduced me to a meaning of it I never knew of. However, a disappointing read overall.
Merged review:
This is not a history of the Americas. IT IS a treatise on why North America, with less natural resources, became a dominant international business leader and global political power whereas Mid and South America, far more endowed with natural resources, failed on the international stage and are really 2nd class states. The book assumes you already know the history of America. This is therefore not a book for the novice, nor is it a good starting place as an introduction to the history of the American Continent.
I'm a fan of the history of South America ... but I didn't find this book at all engaging; it failed hopelessly in increasing my knowledge with regard to America as a whole. I found Armesto's arguments ... on why the North became a world power and the South disappeared into the second division ... not very cohesive; none of the chapters, to my eyes, had any focus.
It is clear South America chose to be a supplier of raw materials and allow others to process them. Landowners in the South exploited cheap (and slave) labour without ever investing in machinery and manufacturing. North America, however, who at one point did use cheap and slave labour, in late 19th century, look to the long view and did invest in technology and manufacturing. South America never really took that step, or took it too late. North America was more far-sighted; simple as that really.
Armesto dismisses the Latin temperament as anything to do with the predicament of South America; to my eyes, it has all to do with it. North Americans took the long-term view when investing; Latin Americans took the short-term gain approach and didn't invest. Simple as that - no great mystery.
I didn't find any of his theses stirred much interest. I'm assuming Felipe Fernandez Armesto is South American himself (?) and it would seem he wanted to rebalance how South American development history is viewed by the world (... mainly by Europeans and North Americans, I suspect ... not sure who his audience is?).
I found the whole book meandered, without a clear overall objective. To be honest, even though each chapter had a headline, I couldn't find any theme maintained in any of them. The whole book seemed a random stream of consciousness to me.
However, you always learn something in any book. Up to now, I thought of maroon as purely a colour; Armesto introduced me to a meaning I never knew of. However, a disappointing read overall.
October 24, 2018
Often factually inaccurate, deeply offensive to and ignorant of North American indigenous culture and activism, flippant in dismissing theory without putting in the work to build its own, wildly antisemitic in one key point, and completely unsourced but for a slapdash, unannotated bibliography at the end.
Do not recommend; read the Steins or Stern instead.
ETA: if you’ve already read it and need a curative, Robin Wall Kimmerer and Pekka Hämäläinen are good for the soul and intellect.
Do not recommend; read the Steins or Stern instead.
ETA: if you’ve already read it and need a curative, Robin Wall Kimmerer and Pekka Hämäläinen are good for the soul and intellect.
October 4, 2018
A satisfactory attempt to understand, explain the Western Hemisphere as a whole. Satisfactory in that certain large-scale trends are only viewable at great objective heights of time and space. The conclusions are debatable, but the attempt itself is worth the read. Felipe is wordy - a style he displays with all his popular work. But his command of the material is also a joy in the reading.
The story of the American Hemisphere is extraordinary. This book offers some really good thoughts on the matter.
The story of the American Hemisphere is extraordinary. This book offers some really good thoughts on the matter.
January 7, 2017
If you enjoyed Guns, Germs and Steel for its big-picture examination of long-term cultural trends, you might enjoy zooming in just a bit on the more recent history of the Americas. Just as Jared Diamond's book attempted to explain why different cultures evolve differently, The Americas follows the turbulent history of the New World, from the first human migrations up to today. Only when the Americas are studied collectively, argues Fernandez-Armesto, can one start to understand how we arrived where we are. How did the most promising, resource-rich, culturally complex zones fall into political chaos and unrest? And how did the barren hinterlands to the north grow into the United States of America? Can the "other Americas" ever hope to catch up without being allowed to exploit their natural resources the way the USA has? This brief, but masterful, survey of American history provides some thought-provoking answers and will undoubtedly spark some questions.
June 16, 2016
3.5/5 stars. The title sums it up: Felipe Fernandez-Armesto attempts to interpret the vast history of the American continents in only 200 tightly-written pages. The Modern Chronicles is an excellent series, and in my opinion this book fares about average in comparison to some of the other entries.
My favorite parts were about an examination of the very word "American", the parallels and differences between North and South America, what made the United States so "great", and the history of the colonial era. In contrast, it bothers the reader that nothing is cited (although the author has high credentials), space is short, and I wish it was written in a more linear way. Despite its flaws, the book is worth a read for anyone interested in the history of the American continents.
My favorite parts were about an examination of the very word "American", the parallels and differences between North and South America, what made the United States so "great", and the history of the colonial era. In contrast, it bothers the reader that nothing is cited (although the author has high credentials), space is short, and I wish it was written in a more linear way. Despite its flaws, the book is worth a read for anyone interested in the history of the American continents.
September 6, 2010
A good introduction to the history of the Americas. There's a lot that I could quibble with but all in all it is a very good introduction.
But his suggestion that history has nothing to teach us because it is all about perspective sticks in the craw. If that is that case, then history has no function beyond narrative...an interesting story and no more. I don't believe any historiography is wholly objective but I don't believe it's entirely subjective either. Both are extremes and disingenuous.
Yet, it is quite a good book and I do recommend it to anyone looking for a good intro to the history of this continent.
But his suggestion that history has nothing to teach us because it is all about perspective sticks in the craw. If that is that case, then history has no function beyond narrative...an interesting story and no more. I don't believe any historiography is wholly objective but I don't believe it's entirely subjective either. Both are extremes and disingenuous.
Yet, it is quite a good book and I do recommend it to anyone looking for a good intro to the history of this continent.
September 14, 2018
It was perhaps a bit overambitious of the author to attempt to provide a comparative history of such a vast land mass as the Americas into just under 200 pages, but if you view this book as a mere introduction then it serves that purpose well. The language is a little overly philosophical and flowery in places for my personal liking, but it does make some excellent points throughout, especially when discussing the ideas behind the word/name 'American', what this meant and how it's evolved over time.
August 20, 2014
I read this book when I'd planned my first visit to Latin America with a view to understand South American history and culture. In the book Armesto explained the historic events and cultural aspects in a unique style that anybody interested in American continent would find it useful. It did help prepare me for some of the cultural differences that any first traveler experiences visiting a new place normally faces.
May 3, 2014
A very broad, at times polemical and clearly left of center history of all of the Americas in 225 short (and small) pages. Perhaps the most valuable part of the book, believe it or not, is bibliographical essay at the end. Lots of great sources to expand my studies of the Americas - particularly Central and South America.
December 31, 2021
For me, I think the book tries to do too much in too few pages, and as a result, doesn't quite fulfill its stated aims. It was an interesting starter for ten on comparative literature of North and South America, but if you want to know more about individual countries within these two continents (excluding the US) in regards to comparison, this isn't that book.
Currently reading
November 16, 2011Actually, I am no longer attempting to read this. It's excellent, but keeps taking a back seat to other books...
I attempted to create an 'abandoned' category for my books, but for reasons that remain a mystery, Goodreads will not allow me to put this book into it!
I attempted to create an 'abandoned' category for my books, but for reasons that remain a mystery, Goodreads will not allow me to put this book into it!
November 12, 2016
Boring and apologetic to all but the U.S.; did point out how European advancement resulted from New World development. Resulting from this book I stopped calling the U.S. "America" because that diminishes much of the remaining western hemisphere.
July 4, 2007
Let's hear it for transatlanticism!
July 29, 2008
A very quick read.
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September 2, 2008
possibly one of the worst, boring books i've ever read
Read
January 16, 2022The author has good things to say, but the problem is, he is too elitist to appreciate the struggles of the native peoples to keep their lives and culture together.
November 15, 2023
Okay. Was very intellectual. Used complex language and prior knowledge (historical references and political vocabulary mostly) of which I’m very unaware and uneducated. I think I learnt some things but kinda feel like it was one of those books where I was just reading but nothing really went in. Cos I’m dumb maybe.
Maybe not the best “beginners Latin American history book” if you know nish about politics or history like me.
Maybe not the best “beginners Latin American history book” if you know nish about politics or history like me.
July 2, 2024
Una historia totalmente diferente a la habitual. Recomendable. Me encantó.
November 10, 2025
This book was very jumbled, without a coherent focus. It also suffered from the author's political biases.
August 11, 2024
TL;DR - The scholarship is sloppy and errors are common throughout the text. The writing style is pretentious and tiresome. The book is mostly focused on the US (both in terms of outlook and sheer amount of text dedicated to the country) and comes nowhere near being a "hemispheric history".
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This is meant to be a compact synthesis of the history Americas from the arrival of the first humans to our own era, going beyond the constraints of purely national histories to look at the commonalities and links across the hemisphere. This is a commendable project, but unfortunately one at which the book fails miserably.
Condensing millennia of social, economic, political and cultural history into 200 pages or so is a task that demands serious scholarship and smart editorial choices, both of which re lacking.
To start with the scholarship: this is the first book I picked up by Fernandez-Armesto, and I was quite optimistic - he has held positions at respected institutions (Oxford, Notre Dame, University of London etc.) and the bibliographical notes are pretty extensive (s0me 15 pages). I am not an academic and have limited knowledge regarding most topics mentioned in the book. Pretty soon, however, I started noticing a number of significant mistakes - plain errors of fact - regarding topics I am somewhat familiar with. These mistakes are everywhere, from political history to religion to geography.
A few examples... Geography: Nazca is in Peru, not Chile. The Peruvian coastal desert encompasses almost the entire coast, not only the North (the only exception is, in fact, in the north, close to Ecuador. The Brazilian Sertão is not a grassland, but a semi-desertic shrubland. Political history: Uruguay became independent from Brazil, not Argentina. Argentina did not seem to be "willing to cede it to Brazil", but fought a long and bitter war over it. Colonial Spanish America was not the closest any state came to the modern absolutist ideal (even if the Bourbon reforms had been successful this would not be true). Religion: Orisha is not a single god, but a category of deity. Candomblé, Umbanda and macumba are not different names for the same thing, there are very significant differences of belief and practices between the first two, while macumba is simply a generic (and usually pejorative) term for Afro-Brazilian religion. The are just some examples out of a very extensive list.
This sloppiness is all the more jarring in light of the style employed by the Fernandez-Armesto: he seems to aim for authoritative and conversational, but comes off as arrogant and cavalier.
The central problem with the book is that it does not, in fact, attempt to be a hemispheric history. Around page 90, when the independence movements are first discussed, the book becomes a repetitive and fanboyish paean to the US. According to the author, "at the heart of the story is the [...] emergence of a hegemonic state, which becomes a superpower, in the north". An "invincibly superior people" (yes, really) comes to prominence and other states and societies are worthy of mention only as objects of US influence or as failed attempts ("American Also-rans" is the actual title of a sub-chapter) to achieve US brilliance.
This approach guides the author's editorial decisions - an essential aspect of writing such a slim volume on such a vast topic. Central actors and processes outside the US are often simply ignored, while US figures who are marginal in hemispheric terms make recurrent and often random appearances. Tupac Amaru II's revolt (the largest and bloodiest in Spanish America before the independence movements) and the Haitian revolution sent shockwaves through the entire hemisphere, but are essentially ignored (Haiti get three or four words). Bolívar gets an offhand mention, San Martín is nowhere to be seen. Aaron Burr gets an entire page, more than Colombia or Bolivia. Frank Lloyd Wright gets more attention than architecture in post-independence Latin America as a whole. Film director DW Griffith makes a truly bizarre appearance as the author of "liberal-humanist epic" (and apparently not grievously racist) The Birth of a Nation. The intellectual and cultural history of Latin America in the 20th century gets compressed into a single cliché-ridden page ("Carmen Miranda made the rumba and the samba sexy"), which comes to the conclusion that, with the exception of literature and music, nothing relevant was produced south of the Rio Grande.
This is not a "hemispheric history". From shortly before its independence, the US is "at the heart of the story" - the only society discussed in any detail and with any interest - while "also-rans" to the south make meaningless cameos every once in a while. This problem is compounded by recurring scholarly mistakes, facile conclusions and very poor editorial choices. Despite being a short read, this book is not worth anybody's time.
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This is meant to be a compact synthesis of the history Americas from the arrival of the first humans to our own era, going beyond the constraints of purely national histories to look at the commonalities and links across the hemisphere. This is a commendable project, but unfortunately one at which the book fails miserably.
Condensing millennia of social, economic, political and cultural history into 200 pages or so is a task that demands serious scholarship and smart editorial choices, both of which re lacking.
To start with the scholarship: this is the first book I picked up by Fernandez-Armesto, and I was quite optimistic - he has held positions at respected institutions (Oxford, Notre Dame, University of London etc.) and the bibliographical notes are pretty extensive (s0me 15 pages). I am not an academic and have limited knowledge regarding most topics mentioned in the book. Pretty soon, however, I started noticing a number of significant mistakes - plain errors of fact - regarding topics I am somewhat familiar with. These mistakes are everywhere, from political history to religion to geography.
A few examples... Geography: Nazca is in Peru, not Chile. The Peruvian coastal desert encompasses almost the entire coast, not only the North (the only exception is, in fact, in the north, close to Ecuador. The Brazilian Sertão is not a grassland, but a semi-desertic shrubland. Political history: Uruguay became independent from Brazil, not Argentina. Argentina did not seem to be "willing to cede it to Brazil", but fought a long and bitter war over it. Colonial Spanish America was not the closest any state came to the modern absolutist ideal (even if the Bourbon reforms had been successful this would not be true). Religion: Orisha is not a single god, but a category of deity. Candomblé, Umbanda and macumba are not different names for the same thing, there are very significant differences of belief and practices between the first two, while macumba is simply a generic (and usually pejorative) term for Afro-Brazilian religion. The are just some examples out of a very extensive list.
This sloppiness is all the more jarring in light of the style employed by the Fernandez-Armesto: he seems to aim for authoritative and conversational, but comes off as arrogant and cavalier.
The central problem with the book is that it does not, in fact, attempt to be a hemispheric history. Around page 90, when the independence movements are first discussed, the book becomes a repetitive and fanboyish paean to the US. According to the author, "at the heart of the story is the [...] emergence of a hegemonic state, which becomes a superpower, in the north". An "invincibly superior people" (yes, really) comes to prominence and other states and societies are worthy of mention only as objects of US influence or as failed attempts ("American Also-rans" is the actual title of a sub-chapter) to achieve US brilliance.
This approach guides the author's editorial decisions - an essential aspect of writing such a slim volume on such a vast topic. Central actors and processes outside the US are often simply ignored, while US figures who are marginal in hemispheric terms make recurrent and often random appearances. Tupac Amaru II's revolt (the largest and bloodiest in Spanish America before the independence movements) and the Haitian revolution sent shockwaves through the entire hemisphere, but are essentially ignored (Haiti get three or four words). Bolívar gets an offhand mention, San Martín is nowhere to be seen. Aaron Burr gets an entire page, more than Colombia or Bolivia. Frank Lloyd Wright gets more attention than architecture in post-independence Latin America as a whole. Film director DW Griffith makes a truly bizarre appearance as the author of "liberal-humanist epic" (and apparently not grievously racist) The Birth of a Nation. The intellectual and cultural history of Latin America in the 20th century gets compressed into a single cliché-ridden page ("Carmen Miranda made the rumba and the samba sexy"), which comes to the conclusion that, with the exception of literature and music, nothing relevant was produced south of the Rio Grande.
This is not a "hemispheric history". From shortly before its independence, the US is "at the heart of the story" - the only society discussed in any detail and with any interest - while "also-rans" to the south make meaningless cameos every once in a while. This problem is compounded by recurring scholarly mistakes, facile conclusions and very poor editorial choices. Despite being a short read, this book is not worth anybody's time.
October 5, 2020
I read Fernández-Armesto to kick off larger research projects. I loved his biographical essay, I've never seen someone cite their work that way and genuinely enjoyed reading it as well as the book. Read my full review here: https://anakalianwhims.com/2020/10/05...
January 3, 2025
Fernández-Armesto is on his strongest ground when making the case for a much wider consideration of Americanness and the parallels and important distinctions in the colonizing experience. His work is at its least compelling, however, when he tries to straddle both of the complicated worlds he inhabits--as a Spanish-British intellectual in America, he is notably European in some of his views, without seeming to acknowledge his own bias as a descendant of the people in the two major colonizing nations of the Americas. Why is he coy about acknowledging that? It felt at several key points that his views were influenced by a persistent need to see the cultures of the indigenous Americans as Other. This bias creeps in at surprising moments, in turns of phrase and erasures, at times causing leaps of logic and conjecture that made me want to cross-reference his work.
A valuable book, but probably best read in context with many other narratives of similar landscape and scope.
A valuable book, but probably best read in context with many other narratives of similar landscape and scope.
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