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The acclaimed author of Conquistador and Labyrinth of Ice charts
one of history's greatest expeditions, a legendary 16th-century
adventurer's death-defying navigation of the Amazon River. In 1541,
Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro and his lieutenant Francisco
Orellana searched for La Canela, South America's rumored Land of
Cinnamon, and the fabled El Dorado, "the golden man." Quickly, the
enormous expedition of mercenaries, enslaved natives, horses, and
hunting dogs were decimated through disease, starvation, and
attacks in the jungle. Hopelessly lost in the swampy labyrinth,
Pizarro and Orellana made the fateful decision to separate. While
Pizarro eventually returned home in rags, Orellana and fifty-seven
men continued into the unknown reaches of the mighty Amazon jungle
and river. Theirs would be the greater glory. Interweaving
historical accounts with newly uncovered details, Levy reconstructs
Orellana's journey as the first European to navigate the world's
largest river. Every twist and turn of the powerful Amazon holds
new wonders and the risk of death. Levy gives a long-overdue
account of the Amazon's people-some offering sustenance and
guidance, others hostile, subjecting the invaders to gauntlets of
unremitting attacks and signs of terrifying rituals. Violent and
beautiful, noble and tragic, River of Darkness is riveting history
and breathtaking adventure that will sweep readers on a voyage
unlike any other.
In the summer of 1913, the wooden-hulled brigantine Karluk departed
Canada for the Arctic Ocean. At the helm was Captain Bob Bartlett,
considered the world's greatest living ice navigator. The
expedition's visionary leader was a flamboyant impresario named
Vilhjalmur Stefansson hungry for fame. Just six weeks after the
Karluk departed, giant ice floes closed in around her. As the ship
became icebound, Stefansson disembarked with five companions and
struck out on what he claimed was a 10-day caribou hunting trip.
Most on board would never see him again. Twenty-two men and an
Inuit woman with two small daughters now stood on a mile-square ice
floe, their ship and their original leader gone. Under Bartlett's
leadership they built make-shift shelters, surviving the freezing
darkness of Polar night. Captain Bartlett now made a difficult and
courageous decision. He would take one of the young Inuit hunters
and attempt a 1000-mile journey to save the shipwrecked survivors.
It was their only hope. Set against the backdrop of the Titanic
disaster and World War I, filled with heroism, tragedy, and
scientific discovery, Empire of Ice and Stone tells the story of
two men and two distinctively different brands of leadership: one
selfless, one self-serving, and how they would forever be bound by
one of the most audacious and disastrous expeditions in polar
history, considered the last great voyage of The Heroic Age of
Discovery.
In this astonishing work of scholarship that reads like an
edge-of-your-seat adventure thriller, acclaimed historian Buddy
Levy records the last days of the Aztec empire and the two men at
the center of an epic clash of cultures perhaps unequaled to this
day.
It was a moment unique in human history, the face-to-face meeting
between two men from civilizations a world apart. In 1519, Hernan
Cortes arrived on the shores of Mexico, determined not only to
expand the Spanish empire but to convert the natives to Catholicism
and carry off a fortune in gold. That he saw nothing paradoxical in
carrying out his intentions by virtually annihilating a proud and
accomplished native people is one of the most remarkable and tragic
aspects of this unforgettable story. In Tenochtitlan Cortes met his
Aztec counterpart, Montezuma: king, divinity, commander of the most
powerful military machine in the Americas and ruler of a city whose
splendor equaled anything in Europe. Yet in less than two years,
Cortes defeated the entire Aztec nation in one of the most
astounding battles ever waged. The story of a lost kingdom, a
relentless conqueror, and a doomed warrior, "Conquistador" is
history at its most riveting.
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