This is a complete history of South and Central America. It is a vivid, analytical narrative and is appropriately illustrated with maps and photographs. The book is divided into six parts. In the first the author describes the natural environment of the continent, the civilizations and cultures of Native American peoples before 1500, and the society of Iberia where the conquerors came from. Part II tells the story of Columbus's voyages and of their aftermath in conquest by the Spanish and Portuguese. Part III examines the means of European dominion: the administration, the church, industry, and colonial society. Parts IV and V describe the mature colonial societies of Spain and Portugal and their patterns of development in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The final part of the book examines the origins and course of the movements for independence, and the history of the new nations during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and considers the effects of US neo–colonialist tactics in the recent past and present. This work will surely become the standard one–volume account of its subject. It concludes with a glossary, bibliography and guide to further reading.