Conquistadors

by Michael Wood Narrated by John Telfer

Overview

Following in the footsteps of the greatest Spanish adventurers, Michael Wood retraces the path of the conquistadors from Amazonia to Lake Titicaca, and from the deserts of North Mexico to the heights of Machu Picchu. As he travels the same routes as Hernán Cortés, Francisco, and Gonzalo Pizarro, Wood describes the dramatic events that accompanied the epic sixteenth-century Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires. He also follows parts of Orellana's extraordinary voyage of discovery down the Amazon and of Cabeza de Vaca's arduous journey across America to the Pacific. Few stories in history match these conquests for sheer drama, endurance, and distances covered, and Wood's gripping narrative brings them fully to life.

Wood reconstructs both sides of the conquest, drawing from sources such as Bernal Diaz's eyewitness account, Cortés's own letters, and the Aztec texts recorded not long after the fall of Mexico. Wood's evocative story of his own journey makes a compelling connection with the sixteenth-century world as he relates the present-day customs, rituals, and oral traditions of the people he meets. He offers powerful descriptions of the rivers, mountains, and ruins he encounters on his trip, comparing what he has seen and experienced with the historical record.

As well as being one of the pivotal events in history, the Spanish conquest of the Americas was one of the most cruel and devastating. Wood grapples with the moral legacy of the European invasion and with the implications of an episode in history that swept away civilizations, religions, and ways of life. The stories in Conquistadors are not only of conquest, heroism, and greed but of changes in the way we see the world, history and civilization, justice and human rights.

Editorial Reviews

Retracing the path of conquistadores Cortés and Pizarro, author-documentarian Michael Wood re-creates the double drama of discovery and culture clash of their journeys. Stunning color photographs and Wood's personal musings place these 16th-century conquests into the context of our own experience.

Baton Rouge Advocate

Light, but not lightweight, Wood's companion book is a good stand-alone work and doesn't need the television show to be enjoyed.

Houston Chronicle

A handsome, lucidly written narrative of events that were, for the most part, a triumph of greed, brutality and blood.

Gene Brucker

This is historical narrative of a very high quality. The prose is lucid, the descriptive episodes powerfully drawn. Wood describes fairly and sensitively the vast gulf that separated these Bronze Age [Aztec and Inca] cultures from the Western behemoth that overwhelmed and destroyed them, stressing in particular the near total inability of each society to comprehend the mores and values of the other.

New York Times

A good deal of extra history can be found in Mr. Wood's illustrated companion book.

ForeWord

This impressively illustrated companion volume to a [PBS] TV series on the destruction of the Aztec and Inca civilizations and related explorations is necessarily one of high drama and telling contrasts. It is also broad-based and balanced, a powerful corrective to the false glamour so often built around Cortes, Pizarro and their colleagues in genocide.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169551815
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	03/01/2013
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

FROM THE PROLOGUE:

Just before 3 a.m., we gulp down several cups of hot coca tea and then each of us carefully packs a ball of coca leaves inthe cheek. Outside the ground is white with frost. It is bitterly cold, and we cram on every available layer of clothing. A deep breath, then on with the rucksack. Hieronymo, the jolly horse-handler, has four helpers to carry the heavy gear, the tripod and boxes, though we have cut the shooting kit down to the minimum. I take the rucksack for my cameras, and soon regret it. Any extra weight becomes a struggle.

FROM THE BOOK:

The Incas had never seen horses before, and the Spanish, realizing that many of the king's entourage were frightened of the animals, made a deliberately threatening gesture to unnerve them—just as they had done in the first exchanges with Montezuma. Hernando de Soto rode right up, spurring his horse so close to Atahuallpa's face that its breath tousled the crimson tassels on the Inca's royal headband. Atahuallpa, however, was unmoved and unblinking, and ordered those who had panicked to be killed. Such lack of courage was demeaning in the staff of a great king. Atahuallpa knew how to be a king.

Author Biography: Michael Wood has worked as a journalist, broadcaster, and filmmaker, and is author of several highly acclaimed books, including Domesday (1986), In Search of the Dark Ages (1987), Legacy (1995), In Search of the Trojan War (California, 1998), and In Search of England (California, 2000). He has over sixty documentary films to his name, among them Legacy, Saddam's Killing Fields, and In the Footsteps of Alexander The Great, for which he also wrote the accompanying book.

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