Best Bolivian History Books
Here you will get Best Bolivian History Books For you.This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.
1. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
Author: by David Grann
Published at: Vintage (January 26, 2010)
ISBN: 978-1400078455
The #1 New York Times bestseller from the author of Killers of the Flower MoonIn 1925, the legendary British explorer Percy Fawcett ventured into the Amazon jungle, in search of a fabled civilization.He never returned. Over the years countless perished trying to find evidence of his party and the place he called The Lost City of Z.
In this masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, journalist David Grann interweaves the spellbinding stories of Fawcett’s quest for Z and his own journey into the deadly jungle, as he unravels the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century.
2. Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life (Revised Edition)
Author: by Jon Lee Anderson
Published at: Grove Press; Revised edition (April 20, 2010)
ISBN: 978-0802144119
A New York Times Notable Book of the year. Acclaimed around the world and a national best-seller, this is the definitive work on Che Guevara, the dashing rebel whose epic dream was to end poverty and injustice in Latin America and the developing world through armed revolution.
Jon Lee Anderson’s biography traces Che’s extraordinary life, from his comfortable Argentine upbringing to the battlefields of the Cuban revolution, from the halls of power in Castro’s government to his failed campaign in the Congo and assassination in the Bolivian jungle.
Anderson has had unprecedented access to the personal archives maintained by Guevara’s widow and carefully guarded Cuban government documents. He has conducted extensive interviews with Che’s comradessome of whom speak here for the first timeand with the CIA men and Bolivian officers who hunted him down.
Anderson broke the story of where Guevara’s body was buried, which led to the exhumation and state burial of the bones. Many of the details of Che’s life have long been cloaked in secrecy and intrigue. Meticulously researched and full of exclusive information, Che Guevara illuminates as never before this mythic figure who embodied the high-water mark of revolutionary communism as a force in history.
3. Bolivar: American Liberator
Author: by Marie Arana
Published at: Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (April 8, 2014)
ISBN: 978-1439110201
A brilliant biography that reads like a wonderful novel but is researched like a masterwork of history (Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs), this is the epic story of the famous South American general and statesman Simn Bolvar. SIMN BOL VAR El Libertadorfreed six countries from Spanish rule and is still the most revered figure in South America today.
He traveled from Amazon jungles to the Andes mountains, engaged in endless battles and forged fragile coalitions of competing forces and races. He lived an epic life filled with heroism, tragedy (his only wife died young), and legend (he was saved from an assassination attempt by one of his mistresses).
In Bolvar, Marie Arana has written a sweeping biography that is as bold and as passionate as its subject. Drawing on a wealth of primary documents, Arana vividly captures the early nineteenth-century South America that made Bolvar the man he became: fearless general, brilliant strategist, consummate diplomat, dedicated abolitionist, gifted writer, and flawed politician.
4. Ch'ixinakax utxiwa: On Decolonising Practices and Discourses (Critical South)
Author: by Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui
Published at: Polity; 1st edition (September 28, 2020)
ISBN: 978-1509537839
The Bolivian scholar and activist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui is a pre-eminent Latin American intellectual, world renowned for her work in postcolonial and subaltern studies. She has long maintained that we must acknowledge how colonial structures of domination continue to affect indigenous identities and cultures.
Even in contexts where diversity and the value of indigenous cultures have been officially recognized, internal colonialism operates as a structure that shapes mental categories and social practices. This book considers this persistent colonial structure by examining artistic and popular practices of apprehending and resisting it, arguing that in Andean cultures there is a sustained practice of insubordinate image production and use.
Combining this visual history with other instances of political resistance, the book offers an alternative narrative to the history of Latin American decolonisation. This narrative challenges the common conception that mestizaje (race-mixing) and hybridity are liberatory formations, offering instead a new theorisation of the complex racial configurations produced by colonialism and its afterlives.
5. Latin America and the Global Cold War (The New Cold War History)
Author: by Thomas C. Field
Published at: University of North Carolina Press (May 18, 2020)
ISBN: 978-1469655697
Latin America and the Global Cold War analyzes more than a dozen of Latin America’s forgotten encounters with Africa, Asia, and the Communist world, and by placing the region in meaningful dialogue with the wider Global South, this volume produces the first truly global history of contemporary Latin America.
It uncovers a multitude of overlapping and sometimes conflicting iterations of Third Worldist movements in Latin America, and offers insights for better understanding the region’s past, as well as its possible futures, challenging us to consider how the Global Cold War continues to inform Latin America’s ongoing political struggles.
Contributors: Miguel Serra Coelho, Thomas C. Field Jr., Sarah Foss, Michelle Getchell, Eric Gettig, Alan McPherson, Stella Krepp, Eline van Ommen, Eugenia Palieraki, Vanni Pettina, Tobias Rupprecht, David M.K. Sheinin, Christy Thornton, Miriam Elizabeth Villanueva, and Odd Arne Westad.
6. Bolívar: Libertador de América / Bolivar: American Liberator (Biografías y Memorias) (Spanish Edition)
Author: by Marie Arana
Published at: Debate; 001 edition (May 19, 2020)
ISBN: 978-8417636456
Un relato biogrfico vibrante que captura la pica historia de Simn Bolvar, El Libertador. Simn Bolvar se gan el sobrenombre de El Libertador tras poner fin al dominio espaol sobre seis pases. Su vida fue heroica, trgica y legendaria: viaj del Amazonas a los Andes, libr eternas batallas, forj alianzas entre razas rivales…
Partiendo de un gran abanico de fuentes, Marie Arana captura un vvido retrato de la Suramrica de inicios del siglo XIX, la que forj a Bolvar y lo convirti en un valeroso general, un estratega brillante, un escritor portentoso y un poltico sin parangn; en definitiva, uno de los personajes ms admirados de Latinoamrica.
Bolvar es una biografa trepidante en la que el lector hallar la imagen de una vida trgica capturada en todo su esplendor y un conmovedor manifiesto de la verdadera esencia del pueblo latinoamericano. ENGLISH DESCRIPTIONA sweeping narrative worthy of a Hollywood epic, this is the authoritative biography of the warrior-statesman who was the greatest figure in Latin American history.
7. Conquistador Voices: The Spanish Conquest of the Americas as Recounted Largely by the Participants
Author: by Kevin H Siepel
Published at: Spruce Tree Press; 1st edition (October 12, 2015)
ISBN: 978-0978646639
The Spanish Conquest: What Really Happened? If you’re a person who likes to learn the messy details of events likely sanitized in your schoolbooks, Conquistador Voices may be for you. You’re likely to find this book not only informative but easy to read, because Conquistador Voices is built around first-person narrativesthe kind of thing that usually holds our attention.
Think of it as a film documentary in written form, one that tells an important story in 500-year-old sound bites and narrative, and that does so in a way that informs without moralizing. In this two-volume set you’ll find neither a defense of the conquistadors nor a politically correct polemic against them.
What you will find is a one-stop, five-part layman’s summary of the Conquest, one that delves dispassionately into persons and events we still talk about today. To see who’s covered in each volume, click on the volume’s cover image and then Look Inside.
If you like what you see, order a copy for yourself or other history buff today.
8. Mother of God: An Extraordinary Journey into the Uncharted Tributaries of the Western Amazon
Author: by Paul Rosolie
Published at: Harper Paperbacks; Reprint edition (March 17, 2015)
ISBN: 978-0062259523
For fans of The Lost City of Z, Walking the Amazon, and Turn Right at Machu Picchu comes naturalist and explorer Paul Rosolie’s extraordinary adventure in the uncharted tributaries of the Western Amazona tale of discovery that vividly captures the awe, beauty, and isolation of this endangered land and presents an impassioned call to save it.
In the Madre de DiosMother of Godregion of Peru, where the Amazon River begins its massive flow, the Andean Mountain cloud forests fall into lowland Amazon Rainforest, creating the most biodiversity-rich place on the planet. In January 2006, when he was just a restless eighteen-year-old hungry for adventure, Paul Rosolie embarked on a journey to the west Amazon that would transform his life.
Venturing alone into some of the most inaccessible reaches of the jungle, he encountered giant snakes, floating forests, isolated tribes untouched by outsiders, prowling jaguars, orphaned baby anteaters, poachers in the black market trade in endangered species, and much more.
9. Potosi: The Silver City That Changed the World (Volume 27) (California World History Library)
Author: by Kris Lane
Published at: University of California Press; First edition (May 28, 2019)
ISBN: 978-0520280847
“For anyone who wants to learn about the rise and decline of Potos as a city … Lane’s book is the ideal place to begin.”New York Review of BooksIn 1545, a native Andean prospector hit pay dirt on a desolate red mountain in highland Bolivia.
There followed the world’s greatest silver bonanza, making the Cerro Rico, or Rich Hill, and the Imperial Villa of Potos instant legends, famous from Istanbul to Beijing. The Cerro Rico alone provided over half of the world’s silver for a century, and even in decline, it remained the single richest source on Earth.
Potos is the first interpretive history of the fabled mining city’s rise and fall. From Potos’s startling emergence in the sixteenth century to its collapse in the nineteenth, Kris Lane tells the story of global economic transformation and the environmental and social impact of rampant colonial exploitation.
Lane’s invigorating narrative offers rare details of this thriving city and its promise of prosperity. A new worldnative workers, market women, African slaves, and other ordinary residents living alongside elite merchants, refinery owners, wealthy widows, and crown officialsemerges in lively, riveting stories from the original sources.
10. Silver, Sword, and Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story
Author: by Marie Arana
Published at: Simon & Schuster (August 27, 2019)
ISBN: 978-1501104244
Winner, American Library Association Booklist’s Top of the List, 2019 Adult Nonfiction Longlisted for the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence Against the background of a thousand years of vivid history, acclaimed writer Marie Arana tells the timely and timeless stories of three contemporary Latin Americans whose lives represent three driving forces that have shaped the character of the region: exploitation (silver), violence (sword), and religion (stone).
Leonor Gonzales lives in a tiny community perched 18,000 feet above sea level in the Andean cordillera of Peru, the highest human habitation on earth. Like her late husband, she works the gold mines much as the Indians were forced to do at the time of the Spanish Conquest.
Illiteracy, malnutrition, and disease reign as they did five hundred years ago. And now, just as then, a miner’s survival depends on a vast global market whose fluctuations are controlled in faraway places. Carlos Buergos is a Cuban who fought in the civil war in Angola and now lives in a quiet community outside New Orleans.
11. Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography
Author: by Dominic Streatfeild
Published at: Picador Paper; First edition (July 1, 2003)
ISBN: 978-0312422264
The story of cocaine isn’t just about crime and profit; it’s about psychoanalysis, about empire building, about exploitation, emancipation, and, ultimately, about power. To tell the story of the twentieth century without reference to this drug and its contribution is to miss a vital and fascinating strand of social history.
Streatfeild examines the story of cocaine from its first medical uses to the worldwide chaos it causes today. His research takes him from the arcane reaches of the British Library to the isolation cells of America’s most secure prisons; from the crackhouses of New York to the jungles of Bolivia and Colombia.
12. Wines of South America: The Essential Guide
Author: by Evan Goldstein
Published at: University of California Press; First edition (August 29, 2014)
ISBN: 978-0520273931
The most comprehensive guide to the wines of the entire continent, Wines of South America introduces readers to the astounding quality and variety of wines that until recently have been enjoyed, for the most part, only locally. Master Sommelier Evan Goldstein leads wine enthusiasts on an exciting geographical journey across ten countries, describing the wines, grapes, and regions of each.
Goldstein begins the tour with a continental overview, discussing the arrival of the vine and wine culture, surveying the range of grapes planted and cultivated, and summarizing the development of modernday viticulture and winemaking. He explores the two giants of the continent, Argentina and Chile, in expansive chapters that cover their unique histories, wine regions, wine styles, prominent grapes, and leading producers.
Goldstein covers the evolving industries of Brazil and Uruguay and discusses the modern-day activities in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela. Up-to-date maps, several engaging photos, and pertinent statistics support each section, which also feature lively profiles of key individuals and wineries that have influenced the development of the craft.
13. Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976
Author: by Piero Gleijeses
Published at: University of North Carolina Press; New edition (February 24, 2003)
ISBN: 978-0807854648
This is a compelling and dramatic account of Cuban policy in Africa from 1959 to 1976 and of its escalating clash with U.S. Policy toward the continent. Piero Gleijeses’s fast-paced narrative takes the reader from Cuba’s first steps to assist Algerian rebels fighting France in 1961, to the secret war between Havana and Washington in Zaire in 1964-65-where 100 Cubans led by Che Guevara clashed with 1,000 mercenaries controlled by the CIA-and, finally, to the dramatic dispatch of 30,000 Cubans to Angola in 1975-76, which stopped the South African advance on Luanda and doomed Henry Kissinger’s major covert operation there.
Based on unprecedented archival research and firsthand interviews in virtually all of the countries involved-Gleijeses was even able to gain extensive access to closed Cuban archives-this comprehensive and balanced work sheds new light on U.S. Foreign policy and CIA covert operations.
It revolutionizes our view of Cuba’s international role, challenges conventional U.S. Beliefs about the influence of the Soviet Union in directing Cuba’s actions in Africa, and provides, for the first time ever, a look from the inside at Cuba’s foreign policy during the Cold War.”Fascinating …
14. The Bolivian Diary: Authorized Edition (Che Guevara Publishing Project)
Author: by Ernesto Che Guevara
Published at: Ocean Press (November 15, 2005)
ISBN: 978-1920888244
THE BASIS OF THE MOVIE CHE: PART TWO FROM STEVEN SODERBERGH STARRING BENICIO DEL TORO This is Che Guevara’s last diary, compiled from notebooks found in his backpack when he was captured by the Bolivian army in October 1967 and subsequently executed.
It became an instant bestseller. Newly revised by Che’s widow (Aleida March), and including a thoughtful preface by his eldest son Camilo, this is the definitive account of the attempt to spark a continent-wide revolution in Latin America. Features of this new edition include:Preface by Camilo GuevaraIntroduction by Fidel CastroRevised translationBiographical noteChronologyGlossaryMaps 32 pp black and white photos
15. Exploration Fawcett: Journey to the Lost City of Z
Author: by Percy Fawcett
Published at: Harry N. Abrams; 1st edition (May 4, 2010)
ISBN: 978-1590204306
The inspiration for the major motion picture “The Lost City of Z,” mystic and legendary British explorer Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett spent 10 years wandering the forests and death-filled rivers of Brazil in search of a fabled lost city. Finally, convinced that he had discovered the location, he set out for the last time toward destination Z in 1925, never to be heard from again.
This thrilling and mysterious account of Fawcett’s ten years of travels in deadly jungles and forests in search of a secret city was compiled by his younger son, Fawcett’s companion on his journeys, from manuscripts, letters, and logbooks. An international sensation when it was first published in 1953, Exploration Fawcett was praised by the likes of Graham Greene and Harold Nicolson, and found its way to Ernest Hemingway’s bookshelf.
Reckless and inspired, full of fortitude and doom, this is a book to rival Heart of Darkness, except that the harrowing accounts described in its pages are completely true. To this day, Colonel Fawcett’s disappearance remains a great mystery.
16. Drug Trafficking, Organized Crime, and Violence in the Americas Today
Author: by Bruce M Bagley
Published at: University Press of Florida; Reprint edition (July 25, 2017)
ISBN: 978-0813054667
“An extensive overview of the drug trade in the Americas and its impact on politics, economics, and society throughout the region…. Highly recommended.”-Choice”A first-rate update on the state of the long-fought hemispheric ‘war on drugs.’ It is particularly timely, as the perception that the war is lost and needs to be changed has never been stronger in Latin and North America.”-Paul Gootenberg, author of Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug”A must-read volume for policy makers, concerned citizens, and students alike in the current search for new approaches to forty-year-old policies largely considered to have failed.”-David Scott Palmer, coauthor of Power, Institutions, and Leadership in War and Peace”A very useful primer for anyone trying to keep up with the ever-evolving relationship between drug enforcement and drug trafficking.”-Peter Andreas, author of Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made AmericaIn 1971, Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs.
Despite foreign policy efforts and attempts to combat supply lines, the United States has been for decades, and remains today, the largest single consumer market for illicit drugs on the planet. This volume argues that the war on drugs has been ineffective at best and, at worst, has been highly detrimental to many countries.
