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Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (1478-1557) wrote the first comprehensive history of Spanish America, the Historia general y natural de las Indias, a sprawling, constantly revised work in which Oviedo attempted nothing less than a complete account of the Spanish discovery, conquest, and colonization of the Americas from 1492 to 1547, along with descriptions of the land's flora, fauna, and indigenous peoples. His Historia, which grew to an astounding fifty volumes, includes numerous interviews with the Spanish and indigenous leaders who were literally making history, the first extensive field drawings of America rendered by a European, reports of exotic creatures, ethnographic descriptions of indigenous groups, and detailed reports about the conquest and colonization process.

Fernández de Oviedo's Chronicle of America explores how, in writing his Historia, Oviedo created a new historiographical model that reflected the vastness of the Americas and Spain's enterprise there. Kathleen Myers uses a series of case studies—focusing on Oviedo's self-portraits, drawings of American phenomena, approaches to myth, process of revision, and depictions of Native Americans—to analyze Oviedo's narrative and rhetorical strategies and show how they relate to the politics, history, and discursive practices of his time. Accompanying the case studies are all of Oviedo's extant field drawings and a wide selection of his text in English translation.

The first study to examine the entire Historia and its evolving rhetorical and historical context, this book confirms Oviedo's assertion that "the New World required a different kind of history" as it helps modern readers understand how the discovery of the Americas became a catalyst for European historiographical change.

The studies span from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, and the contributing scholars occupy diverse fields within Latin American and Hispanic Studies. As such, their essays showcase eclectic critical and theoretical approaches to the subject of Latin American and Iberian food.

Food, Texts, and Cultures in Latin America and Spain also introduces the first English-language publication of works from such award-winning scholars as Adolfo Castañón of the Mexican Academy of Language; Sergio Ramírez, winner of the 2017 Miguel de Cervantes Prize in Literature; and Carmen Simón Palmer, winner of the 2015 Julián Marías Prize for Research.

A narrative of the life of Francisco Franco, Spanish general and dictator.

Growing up in the wake of the Spanish military’s shattering defeat at the hands of the United States in 1898 over Cuba and having survived a bullet to the stomach while serving his country in Morocco, Francisco Franco’s fame and notoriety were eventually guaranteed by his ruthless pursuit of victory for the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. 

Franco played a major role on the world stage until his death in 1975. At once intensely sentimental and affecting cool indifference at times of bad news, he emphasized the need to obey orders, the importance of individual bravery, absolute loyalty to the Fatherland, and the crucial role of the army. Franco was variously courted by the liberal democracies of Britain and France, the Fascist alliance of Hitler and Mussolini, and then by anti-communist administrations in Washington, but the memory of his successful policies, leading to rapid growth during a time of economic depression, is tempered by his government’s extreme repression of political opponents and perpetration of mass violence during the White Terror.

In this updated edition of Franco, featuring a new introduction by the author, Michael Streeter explores the Generalissimo’s legacy as the subject of a cult of personality in one of Europe’s longest-lasting modern dictatorships and considers his genesis, his successes (decades of relative stability and prosperity during a period of great European conflict), and the terrible cost at which they came.