Bøger af Robert Goodwin

Nearly three centuries before Lewis and Clark's epic trek to the Pacific coast, an African slave named Esteban Dorantes became America's first great explorer and adventurer?the first pioneer from the Old World to explore the entirety of the American South. Shipwrecked off the Florida coast, Esteban guided a small band of survivors on an incredible, eight-year-long journey westward?enduring famine, disease, and Native American hostility as the company made their way across what is now Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, traveling as far as the Gulf of California. Drawing on contemporary accounts, long-lost records, and Dr. Robert Goodwin's groundbreaking research in Spanish archives, Crossing the Continent is a riveting true story of physical endurance, natural calamities, geographical wonders, and strange discoveries?a remarkable chronicle that offers a radical new interpretation of American history.

In the sixteenth century, the Spaniards became the first nation in history to have worldwide reach--across most of Europe to the Americas, the Philippines, and India. The Golden Age of the Spanish Empire would establish five centuries of Western supremacy across the globe and usher in an era of transatlantic exploration that eventually gave rise to the modern world. It was a time of discovery and adventure, of great political and social change--a time when Spain learned to rule the world.It was also a time of great turbulence and transition, which fueled an exceptional flourishing of art and literature and inspired new ideas about international law, merchant banking, and economic and social theory. Chronicling the lives and achievements of a cast of legendary characters--great soldiers like the Duke of Alba, artists and writers like El Greco, Velázquez and Cervantes, and the powerful monarchs who ruled over them--Robert Goodwin delves into previously unrecorded sources to bring this tumultuous and exciting period to life. Spain is a revealing portrait of an empire at the height of its power and a world at the dawn of a new age.