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The Americas: A Hemispheric History (Modern Library Chronicles)
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The Americas: A Hemispheric History Features
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About The Americas: A Hemispheric History
Review “An imaginative, intelligent and sprightly volume that, in the space of some two hundred pages, races through the history of the Western hemisphere–from prehistoric times to the present.” –The Washington Post Book World “This wonderfully sharp and provocative book should become essential reading for anybody interested in the history of America.” –The Times Literary Supplement (London) “Fernández-Armesto can personalize broad historical trends without sinking into triviality. . . . History written at its best.” –Booklist Product Description In this groundbreaking work, leading historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto tells the story of our hemisphere as a whole, showing why it is impossible to understand North, Central, and South America in isolation without turning to the intertwining forces that shape the region. With imagination, thematic breadth, and his trademark wit, Fernández-Armesto covers a range of cultural, political, and social subjects, taking us from the dawn of human migration to North America to the Colonial and Independence periods to the “American Century” and beyond. Fernández-Armesto does nothing less than revise the conventional wisdom about cross-cultural exchange, conflict, and interaction, making and supporting some brilliantly provocative conclusions about the Americas’ past and where we are headed. From the Back Cover From food to the spread of political ideas, the landmass from northern Canada to the southern tip of Argentina is complexly bound together, yet these connections are generally ignored. In this groundbreaking and vividly rendered work, leading historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto tells, for the first time, the story of our hemisphere as a whole, showing why it is impossible to understand North, Central, and South America in isolation, and looking instead to the intricate and common forces that continue to shape the region. With his trademark erudition, imagination, and thematic breadth, Fernandez-Armesto ranges over commerce, religion, agriculture, the environment, the slave trade, culture, and politics. He takes us from man's arrival in North America to the Colonial and Independence periods, to the "American Century" and beyond. For most of human history, the south dominated the north: as Fernandez-Armesto argues in his provocative conclusion, it might well again. A panoramic yet richly textured story that embodies fresh ways of looking at cross-cultural exchange, conflict, and interaction, The Americas demolishes our traditional ways of looking at the hemisphere, putting in place a compelling and fruitful new vision. "From the Hardcover edition. About the Author Felipe Fernández-Armesto, the Prince of Asturias Professor of History at Tufts University, is the author of several books, including Millennium, Columbus, and Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1 Americas? America? Americans bicker over the name of Americans. To the chorus in West Side Story, America is a foreign land, where some of them “like to be,” a sentiment apparently inaccessible to them in Puerto Rico. Canadians write to newspapers in the United States complaining that the citizens of one country have usurped the appellation of Americans. The Spanish intellectual Américo Castro was so called because he was born on a boat on the way to Argentina. In much of South America the people of the United States are called norteamericanos, whereas the northernmost Americans are actually Inuit and the United States reaches only the forty-eighth parallel. A character in Barcelona, Whit Stillman’s film about U.S. expatriates trying to cope with anti-Americanism, resents the Spanish term estadounidense because it makes him feel despised as “dense.” Many of the names by which Americans call one another—Anglos, Afros, indios, Latinos, Caucasians—tug at other continents. The privileged names now enjoyed by some minorities—Native Americans, indígenas, First Nations
