The Americas: A History of Two Continents (UNIVERSAL HISTORY) - Tapa dura

Críticas

Felipe was interviewed on the TODAY PROGRAMME (BBC Radio 4) on Monday 8th September and by RELAX WITH A BOOK on 29th September. There has been interest from the SUNDAY TIMES news review, for an interview with or an article by Felipe. Events: CAMBRIDGE HISTORY FESTIVAL (Sunday 7 September) - Felipe Fernandez-Armesto is taking part in an event called 'Making Sense of History' where he will explore the challenge of squeezing centuries into programme slots. CHELTENHAM (11 October) - Felipe will be in a debate with Hugh Thomas Reviews: 'The indefatigable Felipe Fernandez-Armesto has produced an admirably concise book of the world's most important and most contrasting continents.'THE BOOKSELLER 'Felipe Fernandez-Armesto is one of the most brilliant historians currently at work. All his books are bravura displays of erudition, fizzing with seminal thoughts, original ideas and new syntheses of existing knowledge. His lastest, ambitious project is no exception. The idea of wrting a synoptic history of both Latin and anglophone Americas is an audacious and inspired one.'Frank McLynn, THE INDEPENDENT (20.9.03) 'One of the most formidable politicalexplicators of our time is undoubtedly Felipe Fernandez-Armesto...[The Americas] really does manage to give a...narrative conviction to the whole story of the western hemisphere, prehistory to 2001, from blank on the map to world dominance. I read every word with admiration...Armesto...has given us an anthology of enthralling historical observations.'Jan Morris, NEW STATESMAN 'Fernandez-Armesto combines an original mind with a vivid pen and here he addresses a complex topic with precision and restraint.'Raymond Seitz, THE TIMES (3.9.03) 'This laudably short book is a stupendous and eminently readable exercise in comparative history...[Fernandez-Armesto's] gifts as an imagainative - and revisionist - historian will give his readers an exhilarating ride throughthe hemisphere - and provide television producers with a memorable script.'Raymond Carr, THE SPECTATOR (13.9.03) Reviews are also planned in the SUNDAY TIMES and LITERARY REVIEW

Reseña del editor

With his trademark range and independence of thought, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto sweeps aside the tidy separation between the enlightened `first world' United States and Canada, and less privileged `Latin America'. He shows us why it is impossible to understand the history of North, Central and South America in isolation.

From the emergence of the first human civilisations through the arrival of Europeans and up to today, the land mass has been bound together in a complex web of inter-relationships - from migration and trade to religion, slavery, warfare, culture, food and the spread of political ideas. For most of human history, it was the South that dominated the North - and, as he argues in his provocative conclusion, it might well again.