front cover of The Misfortunes of Alonso Ramírez
The Misfortunes of Alonso Ramírez
The True Adventures of a Spanish American with 17th-Century Pirates
By Fabio López Lázaro
University of Texas Press, 2011

In 1690, a dramatic account of piracy was published in Mexico City. The Misfortunes of Alonso Ramírez described the incredible adventures of a poor Spanish American carpenter who was taken captive by British pirates near the Philippines and forced to work for them for two years. After circumnavigating the world, he was freed and managed to return to Mexico, where the Spanish viceroy commissioned the well-known Mexican scholar Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora to write down Ramírez's account as part of an imperial propaganda campaign against pirates.

The Misfortunes of Alonso Ramírez has long been regarded as a work of fiction—in fact, as Latin America's first novel—but Fabio López Lázaro makes a convincing case that the book is a historical account of real events, albeit full of distortions and lies. Using contemporary published accounts, as well as newly discovered documents from Spanish, English, French, Portuguese, and Dutch archives, he proves that Ramírez voyaged with one of the most famous pirates of all time, William Dampier. López Lázaro's critical translation of The Misfortunes provides the only extensive Spanish eyewitness account of pirates during the period in world history (1650–1750) when they became key agents of the European powers jockeying for international political and economic dominance. An extensive introduction places The Misfortunes within the worldwide struggle that Spain, England, and Holland waged against the ambitious Louis XIV of France, which some historians consider to be the first world war.

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The True Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
John Seelye
University of Illinois Press, 1987
"Seelye's version seems even
  funnier than the original, and also more moving, since Seelye's Huck Finn is
  even less sentimental about life and Tom Sawyer than Twain's Huck Finn. He is
  also more perceptive about black people than the original."
  -- Hughes Rudd, CBS News
"Seelye has stitched together
  a whale of a book. Without reference to Twain's own version, it is almost impossible
  to see the seams where 1970 joins 1884."
  -- Geoffrey Wolff, Newsweek
 
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