Conquistadors

By: Michael Wood

Narrated by: John Telfer

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.

©2011 Michael Wood (P)2011 AudioGO

Critic reviews

“[An] accessible, literate, and lively book.” (Amazon.com, editorial review)

“The digestible narrative provides a provocative overview of a historical episode that was both magnificent and shameful.” ( Booklist)

“A handsome, lucidly written narrative of events that were, for the most part, a triumph of greed, brutality, and blood.” ( Houston Chronicle)

The trampling of people and culture

Wood does a good job of portraying the unbridled ambition that drove the conquest of the new world. This wa a very engaging read that mixed the history with the modern day quest to see the areas and understand the people of today that remain from the indigenous first people and the mixing of the foreign invaders.

Well thought out. Entertaining and informative

Pretty neat how he in real life is tracing the very footsteps of the men that the stories are about and travelling to visit the current versions of the cities that he is speaking of as he stitches together information from various sources in an effort to give us a more complete picture.

Excellent

Great book. Very informative, and great analysis. The narration is one of the best I've heard.

It’s a must.

No joke this was one of the best audiobooks I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to. The writing was incredible and I found myself transported back through time to the age of conquest. This book was truly incredible 💯

Eye opening experience.

As open as I believed my views to be I see they were all but narrow.

Epic Adventure and Incredible History

I thought Australia explorers had it bad, but it seems too much water is a problem too! The story of making it to the mouth of the Amazon River was amazing. Really interesting history of so many cultures and very well presented.

Brilliantly written and fascinating

Brillantly written, a fascinating and comprehensive explanation of the discovery of the Americas by the unique group of men known as the conquistadors. What has seem to me always cold and factual history was brought to live in startling and compelling detail. When I was done with it I immediately play the book again and then planned a trip to Mexico to see what was highlighted in the book on the subject of the Aztecs

Fascinating historic narrative

I think this book covers a number of the major conquistador stories in a thorough and interesting fashion and was quite an entertaining read overall. The present-day portion of the narrative was not really introduced in any substantial way though and the periodic returns to modern, first-person narrative seem a bit disjointed and add little to the primary history. Bottom line though is good read with only the occasional tangent.

Epic History

This remarkable book, which traces four of the major Conquistadors through both primary documents and by literally retracing their routes of conquest and travel, provides an epic narrative. Sympathetic to both the Native peoples and their would be Conquerors, yet honest regarding the actions of both, Wood's work, beautifully read and presented by Telfer, presents in colorful and often moving detail the struggle and its aftermath. If you want to get a sense of both what it might have been like to be on either side in the 1500s (though the record is tilted heavily toward the Spanish given the preponderance of sources) and the impact of the Spanish Conquest in the centuries since, it would be hard to do better than this. It is most definitely worth your attention.

69

I thoroughly enjoyed this account of the Conquistadors. I was a little ignorant of some of the other Spaniards besides Cortez, but Michael Woods was able to vividly paint the picture of their personality, and the influence it had on their way of conquering. All the sad details of destruction and anguish are also present, giving a clear picture of what the Natives experienced.