Showing titles in Mexico

Continue the journey through the history, adventure, tension, and dangers faced by the Conquistadors, led by Hernan Cortes - the Alexander of the Americas - as they continue their epic tale of conquest against the Mexican Empire. After Cortes' expulsion from the Mexican capital on the much-lamented Night of Sorrows, the Conquistadors are reeling and their alliances crumbling. Hernan Cortes, unbowed and undaunted, refuses to give up the fight and determines to stay the course of the war against the Aztecs, and his own countrymen, to its bitter conclusion.

This fascinating journey through Mexico’s history, from its amazing pre-Hispanic past to the end of the 20th century, will reveal more surprises than the listener can imagine. In the words of the self-proclaimed Mexican singer Chavela Vargas, “Mexico has magic. I looked for that magic, and I found it there.”

A climate defined by wet and dry seasons, a mostly mountainous terrain, a biota prone to disturbances, a human geography characterized by a diversity of peoples all of whom rely on burning in one form or another: Mexico has ideal circumstances for fire, and those fires provide a unique perspective on its complex history. Narrating Mexico's evolution of fire through five eras, historian Stephen J. Pyne describes the pre-human, pre-Hispanic, colonial, industrializing (1880-1980), and contemporary (1980-2015) fire biography of this diverse and dynamic country.

The Aztecs believed offerings of human blood and human lives were necessary to the continued running of the universe. Indeed, in Aztec myths, the gods themselves make sacrifices of their own blood and even of their entire bodies in order to create a universe humans can live in and, in one story, to create humans themselves. To the ancient Aztecs, these practices seemed fitting, necessary, and honorable, helping to connect the world of humans to the divine world of the gods, a universe that in Aztec myth took shape in cycles of creation, destruction, and rebirth.

In 1519, Hernando Cortés arrived in Mexico to investigate stories of a wealthy empire. What he encountered was beyond his wildest dreams; an advanced civilization with complex artistic, political, and religious systems (involving extensive human sacrifice) and replete with gold. This was the Aztec empire, headed by the aloof emperor, Montezuma.

Did you know that Shah Jahan once planned to build another Taj Mahal in his empire? Ancient sources contradict each other, which can be confusing at times. But that is about to change. With this all-new history book, you can easily explore the gripping events that led to the construction of the Seven Wonders of the New World.

Where do human societies come from? The drive to answer this question took on a new urgency in the nineteenth century, when a generation of archaeologists began to look beyond the bible for the origins of different cultures and civilizations. Zelia Nuttall threw herself into the study of Aztec customs and cosmology, eager to use the tools of the emerging science of anthropology to prove that modern Mexico was built over the ruins of ancient civilizations.

For hundreds of years, the history of the conquest of Mexico and the defeat of the Aztecs has been told in the words of the Spanish victors. Miguel León-Portilla has long been at the forefront of expanding that history to include the voices of indigenous peoples. In this new and updated edition of his classic The Broken Spears, León-Portilla has included accounts from native Aztec descendants across the centuries. These texts bear witness to the extraordinary vitality of an oral tradition that preserves the viewpoints of the vanquished instead of the victors.

This is the untold story of the American federal agent who captured the world's most wanted drug lord. Every generation has its larger-than-life criminal legend living beyond the reach of the law: Billy the Kid, Al Capone, Ronnie Biggs, Pablo Escobar. But for every one of these criminals, there's a Wyatt Earp, Pat Garrett or Slipper of the Yard. For Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán-Loera, aka 'El Chapo' - the 21st century's most notorious criminal - that man is DEA Special Agent Cole Merrell.

Vamos a mandar a México a unas cuantas sesiones de psicoterapia. Lo acostaremos en el diván y lo enfrentaremos contra sí mismo, para ver si la lógica y la razón logran imponerse contra los dogmas históricos ridículos que lo atan al pasado.

Featuring primary sources from figures of the period, Van Young discusses the political instability of the period—internal warfare, military uprisings, intermittent dictatorships, sharp conflicts among political groupings—and attributes them to a belief by political actors in the fundamental lack of legitimacy in central government institutions after the sweeping away of the Bourbon imperial structure and its replacement first with a very short-lived Mexican empire followed by a series of increasingly authoritarian aspirational republican constitutions.

After a decade of chasing stories around the globe, intrepid travel writer Stephanie Elizondo Griest followed the magnetic pull home - only to discover that her native South Texas had been radically transformed in her absence. Ravaged by drug wars and barricaded by an 18-foot steel wall, her ancestral land had become the nation's foremost crossing ground for undocumented workers, many of whom perished along the way.

¿Qué tiene que ver el asesinato de tres mujeres y seis niños, a mitad del desierto, con la disputa por la riqueza minera de un país? En apariencia nada, si eso no hubiese ocurrido en México… La riqueza minera mexicana se encuentra intrínsecamente ligada a la violencia. En las últimas décadas, cientos de mineras han aplicado un modelo de despojo de tierras y desplazamiento de poblaciones donde existen altos intereses extractivos, muchas veces apoyadas por el crimen organizado.

The Spanish Conquest: What really happened? If you like to use your drive time for education by audiobook, consider this audiobook for widening and deepening your view of an event you studied briefly in school - the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Conquistador Voices, neither glamorizes nor condemns the conquistadors. Somewhat in the manner of a modern film documentary, it treats the so-called conquest as an historical event that’s worth learning about for its own sake, with most of the moralizing left to the listener.

As early as 1530, reports of El Dorado, a city of gold in the South American interior, beckoned to European explorers. Whether there was any truth to the stories remained to be seen, but the allure of unimaginable riches was enough to ensnare dozens of would-be heroes and glory hounds in the desperate hunt. Among them was Sir Walter Raleigh: ambitious courtier, confidant to Queen Elizabeth, and, before long, El Dorado fanatic.

Díaz. La otra historia nos narra en primera persona —quién mejor que uno mismo para confesar sus pecados y presumir sus victorias— la vida de Porfirio, el hijo de un cura franciscano que murió de cólera, el seminarista que colgó los hábitos para estudiar leyes, el joven incestuoso que amó profundamente a su sobrina, el masón de la logia Cristo Rey que fue escalando bajo la mirada escrutadora de Benito Juárez, el político agreste a quien su querida Carmelita convirtió en "don Porfirio", el gran militar y patriota que murió exiliado en París.

Combining on-the-ground reporting and in-depth discussions with people on the frontlines of Mexico's drug war, To Die in Mexico tells behind-the-scenes stories that address the causes and consequences of Mexico's multibillion dollar drug trafficking business. John Gibler looks beyond the myths that pervade government and media portrayals of the unprecedented wave of violence now pushing Mexico to the breaking point.

From the boundary surveys of the 1850s to the ever-expanding fences and highway networks of the 21st century, Border Land, Border Water examines the history of the construction projects that have shaped the region where the United States and Mexico meet. Tracing the accretion of ports of entry, boundary markers, transportation networks, fences and barriers, surveillance infrastructure, and dams and other river engineering projects, C. J. Alvarez advances a broad chronological narrative that captures the full life cycle of border building

In a Mexico City mansion on October 23, 1789, Don Joaquin Dongo and ten of his employees were brutally murdered by three killers armed with machetes. Investigators worked tirelessly to find the perpetrators, who were publicly executed two weeks later. Labelled the "crime of the century," these events and their aftermath have intrigued writers of fiction and nonfiction for over two centuries. Using a range of sources, Nicole von Germeten recreates a paper trail of Enlightenment-era greed and savagery, and highlights how the violence of the Mexican judiciary echoed the acts of the murderers.

Pietro La Greca Sr. was an intimidating Napolitano con man dubbed “Mexico’s real-life Don Corleone”. He ran Mexico’s biggest money-laundering scheme during the worst economic period in the country’s history. His was a world of fast cars, mansions on the water, and VIP treatment at Las Vegas casinos. His exploitation of Mexico’s financial free fall made him a wealthy man. But while he was running his criminal empire, his son, Pietro Jr., a.k.a. Picho, was learning his father’s tricks—if only to bring the man down.