Showing titles in South America

Wizard of the Upper Amazon is an extraordinary document of the life among a tribe of South American Indians at the beginning of the 20th century. For many listeners, the most compelling sections of the audiobook will be the descriptions of the use of Banisteriopsis caapi, the ayahuasca of the Amazon forests. This powerful hallucinogen has long been credited with the ability to transport human beings to realms of experience where telepathy and clairvoyance are commonplace. Manual Córdova, the narrator of these adventures, is well-known as a healer in Peru. 

Perú es una tierra que, para muchos, parece lejana y distante. Incluso para quienes viven relativamente cerca geográficamente, Perú puede parecer fuera de su alcance. Después de todo, Perú está situado en lo alto de los Andes, en la costa occidental de Sudamérica. Los que se atreven a vivir a esta altitud han aprendido a vivir a su manera.

For many Americans, Brazil is a land of contradictions: vast natural resources and entrenched corruption; extraordinary wealth and grinding poverty; beautiful beaches and violence-torn favelas. Brazil occupies a vivid place in the American imagination, and yet it remains largely unknown. In an extraordinary journey that spans 500 years, from European colonization to the 2016 Summer Olympics, Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling's Brazil offers a rich, dramatic history of this complex country.

In the early years of the 18th century, a band of French scientists set off on a daring, decade-long expedition to South America in a race to measure the precise shape of the earth. Like Lewis and Clark's exploration of the American West, their incredible mission revealed the mysteries of a little-known continent to a world hungry for discovery. Scaling 16,000-foot mountains in the Peruvian Andes, and braving jaguars, pumas, insects, and vampire bats in the jungle, the scientists barely completed their mission.

The Motorcycle Diaries is Che Guevara's diary of his journey to discover the continent of Latin America while still a medical student, setting out in 1952 on a vintage Norton motorcycle together with his friend Alberto Granado, a biochemist. It captures, arguably as much as any book ever written, the exuberance and joy of one person's youthful belief in the possibilities of humankind tending toward justice, peace, and happiness.

In 1541, the brutal conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro and his well-born lieutenant Francisco Orellana set off from Quito in search of La Canela, South America's rumored Land of Cinnamon, and the fabled El Dorado, "the golden man". Driving an enormous retinue of mercenaries, enslaved natives, horses, hunting dogs, and other animals across the Andes, they watched their proud expedition begin to disintegrate even before they descended into the nightmarish jungle, following the course of a powerful river.

"A proposta de uma revolução copernicana na análise e interpretação da história do Brasil—esta é a marca identificadora do novo livro de Jorge Caldeira. Valendo-se de novos dados, antes de difícil acesso organizado, investiga a formação da riqueza em nosso país, desde a Colônia, para atribuir nova dimensão ao papel do mercado interno."

The story of the Incas is a powerful one, and their legacy remains a potent influence in the Andes of South America. In this insightful lecture series, Columbia University professor Terence D'Altroy focuses on Inca life at the height of the empire, the society's origins, its military, religion, ruling structure, and finally, the Inca legacy today.

In Angels with Dirty Faces, Jonathan Wilson chronicles the operatic drama of Argentinian soccer: the appropriation of the British game, the golden age of la nuestra, the exuberant style of playing that developed as Juan Perón led the country, a hardening into the brutal methods of anti-fútbol, the fusion of beauty and efficacy under César Luis Menotti, and the emergence of all-time greats.

In March of 2017, a team of FBI agents arrested Juan Granda, Samer Barrage, and Renato Rodriguez, or as they called themselves, "the three amigos". The trio - first identified publicly by the authors of this book - had built a $3.6 billion dollar business in metals trading, mostly illegal Peruvian gold. Their arrests and subsequent prosecution laid bare more than a corrupt finance firm, though. Instead, Dirty Gold lifts the veil on an illegal international business that is five times as lucrative as trafficking cocaine, and arguably more dangerous.

The Galápagos archipelago is often viewed as a last foothold of pristine nature. For 60 years, conservationists have worked to restore this evolutionary Eden after centuries of exploitation at the hands of pirates, whalers, and island settlers. This book tells the story of the islands' namesakes - the giant tortoises - as coveted food sources, objects of natural history, and famous icons of conservation and tourism. By doing so, it brings into stark relief the paradoxical, and impossible, goal of conserving species by trying to restore a past state of prehistoric evolution.

On an August night in 1994, French counterespionage officers seized the world's most wanted terrorist from a villa in the Sudan. After more than two decades on the run, Carlos "the Jackal" had finally been caged. For years he had murdered and bombed his way to notoriety, evading capture thanks to powerful backers and the blunders of Western secret services. Jackal is the definitive biography of this self-proclaimed "professional revolutionary", ladies man, and cold-blooded killer.

It is astonishing that Simón Bolívar, the great Liberator of South America, is not better known in the United States. He freed six countries from Spanish rule, traveled more than 75,000 miles on horseback to do so, and became the greatest figure in Latin American history. His life is epic, heroic, straight out of Hollywood: he fought battle after battle in punishing terrain, forged uncertain coalitions of competing forces and races, lost his beautiful wife soon after they married and died relatively young, uncertain whether his achievements would endure.

If you like to use your drive time for education by audiobook, consider this book for widening and deepening your view of an event you studied briefly in school - the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Conquistador Voices, which relies more heavily than most works of this kind on first-person accounts, neither glamorizes nor condemns the conquistadors. Somewhat in the manner of a modern film documentary, it treats the so-called conquest as an historical event that’s worth learning about for its own sake, with most of the moralizing left to the listener.

On October 12, 1972, a plane carrying a team of young rugby players crashed into the remote, snow-peaked Andes. Out of the 45 original passengers and crew, only 16 made it off the mountain alive. For 10 excruciating weeks, they suffered deprivations beyond imagining, confronting nature head-on at its most furious and inhospitable. And to survive, these men and women not only had to keep their faith; they had to make an impossible decision: Should they eat the flesh of their dead friends?

This is the true story of the real Colonel Fawcett, whose life was the inspiration for the best-selling book The Lost City of Z and an upcoming movie starring Brad Pitt. A thrilling account, it tells of Colonel Fawcett and his mysterious disappearance in the Amazon jungle, which is now considered one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century.

“Este libro de historia, aunque vaya ilustrado con caricaturas, no va en chiste: va en serio”, así empieza este fascinante libro, un agudo recorrido por la historia del país, desde los días del Descubrimiento y la Conquista, pasando por los años de la Independencia, la Regeneración, la Hegemonía Conservadora, la República Liberal, el Frente Nacional, la época de la Violencia, hasta llegar a nuestros días. Antonio Caballero no sólo tiene el país en la cabeza, también tiene allí su historia entera, y gracias a esto hace que el relato de los hechos que nos han marcado –hechos tan enmarañados, tan insólitos, tan atribulados– sea un interesante y fluido recorrido por todos aquellos acontecimientos y personajes que han moldeado el camino hasta traernos al escenario actual.

Con su mirada crítica y su característico humor, Caballero nos pone de cara a los hechos para poder reconocer nuestras manías, nuestros vicios y nuestras repetidas fallas como sociedad. Y también las irrefrenables y perpetuas ansias de poder de quienes han dirigido el destino del país.

When the San José mine collapsed outside of Copiapó, Chile, in August 2010, it trapped thirty-three miners beneath thousands of feet of rock for a record-breaking sixty-nine days. After the disaster, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Héctor Tobar received exclusive access to the miners and their tales, and in Deep Down Dark, he brings them to haunting, visceral life. We learn what it was like to be imprisoned inside a mountain, understand the horror of being slowly consumed by hunger, and experience the awe of working in such a place-underground passages filled with danger.

Delving into the vibrant history and beautiful culture of the South American continent, inside this guide you’ll be taken on a journey into the past, uncovering a richly woven story that has played out through the ages. From the time of the great Inca Empire to the foundation of the modern-day countries we know so well, this book unveils the secrets of South America like never before.

We, Yanamamo, only speak our stories. We never mark our words on paper like you nabas. These words from my mouth—if you are seeing them on paper, you must be a maba. Because you are a naba, there are many things I must explain, so you can understand the story of my people—Jungleman. So begins the riveting first person account of Jungleman, a shaman for the Yanomamo Indians. A fascinating and misunderstood people group, now for the first time, a powerful Yanomamo shaman speaks for his people.