Showing titles in South America

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?

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.

This book discusses the struggles and importance of Carlos Gracie Jr. and the IBJJF in giving jiu-jitsu structure, shape, and professional credibility at a time where it was under threat of becoming simply another fad. The Rise and Evolution of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu also discusses the greatest challenges the art faces today, as its popularity carries with it problems that threaten to fragment precisely some of the qualities that set jiu-jitsu apart from other martial arts to begin with.

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.

This edition of Che Guevara's diary of the last year of his life describes Che's efforts to launch a guerrilla insurrection against the military government of Bolivia. It was found in his backpack when he was captured by the Bolivian Army in October 1967.

Before Columbus's fateful voyage in 1492, no European had ever seen, much less tasted, tobacco or chocolate. Initially dismissed as dry leaves and an odd Indian drink, these two commodities came to conquer Europe on a scale unsurpassed by any other American resource or product. A fascinating story of contact, exploration, and exchange in the Atlantic world, Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures traces the ways in which these two goods of the Americas both changed and were changed by Europe.

Having had unparalleled access to the Chilean mine disaster, award-winning journalist Jonathan Franklin takes readers to the heart of a remarkable story of human endurance, survival, and historic heroism. 33 Men is the groundbreaking, authoritative account of the Chilean mine disaster, one of the longest human entrapments in history.

Nemesis is the story of an ordinary man who became the king of the largest slum in Rio, the head of a drug cartel, and perhaps Brazil's most wanted criminal. It's a gripping tale of gold hunters and evangelical pastors, bent police and rich-kid addicts, quixotic politicians and drug lords with math degrees. Traversing through rain forests and high-security prisons, filthy slums and glittering shopping malls, this is also the story of how change came to Brazil.

Overlapping with the Amazon and the Andes, Peru is a rich and incredible country with a long history. Now, this audiobook examines Peru’s story, covering the early Inca Empire, one of the most advanced pre-American societies, to colonization and Peru’s journey to its place in the modern world.

A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies is the story of the Spanish Dominican priest Bartolome de las Casas, who came to the Americas in the 16th century. Immediately he was struck by the inhumane ways in which the native peoples were treated by the European explorers and conquerors, Las Casas went on to be a leading opponent of slavery, torture, and genocide of the Native Americans by the Spanish colonists.

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.

Discover the remarkable history of the Inca Empire...In the space of less than one hundred years, the Inca people expanded from being a small kingdom in the highlands of Peru to becoming one of the largest and most powerful empires in the Americas. At the height of its power, the Inca Empire stretched for more than one thousand miles down the Andes Mountains and the west coast of South America. It incorporated more than two hundred distinct ethnic groups and somewhere around fourteen million people were ruled by a much smaller number of Incas.

The Paraguayan War of 1864–1870 was the bloodiest war between nations in South American history. Discover how tiny Paraguay had a tyrant with a giant ego and the largest army on the continent, and how and why he invaded Brazil and Argentina. Learn about the biggest naval battle in South America’s history, and about the Paraguayan fortress called South America’s Gibraltar.

When the San José mine collapsed outside of Copiapó, Chile, in August 2010, it trapped 33 miners beneath thousands of feet of rock for a record-breaking 69 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.

In this exciting true adventure mixed with amazing scientific study, a young, exuberant explorer and geoscientist journeys deep into the Amazon - where rivers boil and legends come to life. When Andrés Ruzo was just a small boy in Peru, his grandfather told him the story of a mysterious legend: There is a river, deep in the Amazon, that boils as if a fire burns below it. Twelve years later, Ruzo - now a geoscientist - hears his aunt mention that she herself had visited this strange river....

Argentina tiene una historia larga y compleja. Durante cientos de años, Argentina estuvo habitada por grupos de cazadores-recolectores. En su mayor parte, estos grupos de personas se llevaban bien entre sí. Con el tiempo, el Imperio inca ascendió y se apoderó de las comunidades argentinas una por una. Los españoles llegaron unos veinte años después, trayendo una nueva ola de invasión a los habitantes nativos. El pueblo argentino no declararía su independencia hasta 1816, y después se enfrentó a una guerra civil tras otra.

Esta es otra historia regresa con su tercera temporada para contar más anécdotas que sucedieron en Latinoamérica desde tiempos de la conquista hasta los modernos.

The Lost Colony of the Confederacy is the story of a grim, quixotic journey of 20,000 Confederates to Brazil at the end of the American Civil War. Although it is not known how many Confederates migrated to South America - estimates range from 8,000 to 40,000 - their departure was fueled by bitterness over a lost cause and a distaste for an oppressive victor. Encouraged by Emperor Dom Pedro, most of these exiles settled in Brazil.

In Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean, Randy M. Browne looks past the familiar numbers of life and death and into a human drama in which enslaved Africans and their descendants struggled to survive against their enslavers, their environment, and sometimes one another.

In response to the American administration's attempt to isolate Cuba, Fidel Castro delivered a series of speeches designed to radicalize Latin American society. As Latin America experiences more revolutions in Venezuela and Bolivia, and continues to upset America's plan for neoliberal imperialism, renowned radical writer and activist Tariq Ali provides a searing analysis of the relevance of Castro's message today. Includes an exclusive additional introduction by Tariq Ali.