The Americas: A Hemispheric History Return to Book Review Page Return to Home Page

By Filipe Fernandez-Armesto

Modern Library 2003

Unfortunately, what comes to mind when “American history” is mentioned to U.S. students is United States history. Except for a smattering about conquistadors and gold-filled Spanish galleons, the whole large continent of South America is largely ignored. This easy-to-read 256-page book fills in the gaps, starting with the first humans to venture across the land bridge that is now the Bering Strait.

The book is a reasonably colorful and interesting narrative, not a dry scholarly effort that might be expected from Fernandez-Armesto, a professor of history and geography at the University of London and member of the faculty of modern history at Oxford University. A slight bias emphasizing Latin American over the United States and Canada actually tends to offset the emphasis that others histories place on the two North American nations.