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What are some books you recommend on American(entire Americas) and Atlantic history? These are the best books I've read so far. Mods: This thread is not meant for advertisement. It's educational.
Freedom's Mirror by Ada Ferrer(Cambridge University Press 2014)
It's about how Cuban planters responded accordingly to the Haitian Revolution to avert a possible uprising in Cuba.
I have others, but I want to see what some of you recommend before I extend the list.
1491: New revelations of the Americas before Columbus, and 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus created. Both books written by Charles C Mann. I have both books but have only completely read the first one, which is obviously about Native Americans in different regions of the Americas. The second one 1493, I haven't finished reading yet, but if you are interest in the colonial era and how the "discovery" of the Americas impacted the world, than obviously you will find this one more interesting.
It is a short novel based on the life and achievenments of the French Colonel Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla, the man considered by Eric Sevareid to be the "inventor of Panama," and about whom President Theodore Roosevelt expressed, "I took Panama because Bunau-Varilla gave it to me on a silver platter."
This work of fiction covers five decades of Bunau-Varilla's very full and accomplished life: from his beginning as a student of the Polytechnic School in Paris; his accidental ascension to General Director of the canal construction when he was barely twenty-six years old; his lucrative business period on the isthmus; his covert lobbying of the United States to discard Nicaragua as the ideal site for the canal construction, and finally; his controversial participation in the secession of Panama from Colombia when the country had rejected a treaty that he had helped to negotiate.
The intervention of Bunau-Varilla forever changed the histories of the United States, Colombia, Nicaragua and Panama. This ambitious and foward-thinking man set into motion a series of events that led, not only to the construction of the Panama Canal, but to the liberation of Panama from Colombia. His actions affected people and politics on two continents and his accomplishments forever changed the course of history. Philippe Bunau-Varilla's story is one of trial and error, and ultimately, of triumph.
In a time of terror for Europe’s monarchs—imprisoned, exiled, executed—Napoleon’s army marched toward Lisbon. Cornered, Prince Regent João had to make the most fraught decision of his life. Protected by the British Navy, he fled to Brazil with his entire family, including his deranged mother, most of the nobility, and the entire state apparatus. Until then, no European monarch had ever set foot in the Americas.
Thousands made the voyage, but it was no luxury cruise. It took two months in cramped, decrepit ships. Lice infested some of the vessels, and noble women had to shave their hair and grease their bald heads with antiseptic sulfur. Vermin infested the food, and bacteria contaminated the drinking water. Sickness ran rampant.
After landing in Brazil, Prince João liberated the colony from a trade monopoly with Portugal. As explorers mapped the burgeoning nation’s distant regions, the prince authorized the construction of roads, the founding of schools, and the creation of factories, raising Brazil to kingdom status in 1815. Meanwhile, Portugal was suffering the effects of abandonment, war, and famine. Never had the country lost so many people in so little time.
Finally, after Napoleon’s fall and over a decade of misery, the Portuguese demanded the return of their king. João sailed back in tears in 1821, and the last chapter of colonial Brazil drew to a close, setting the stage for big, independent nation that we know today, changing the New World forever.
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