The Americas
Felipe Fernández-Armesto, The Americas: A Hemispheric History (Modern Library, 2005)
Summary: Sweeping, yet concise; comprehensive, yet fluid; magisterial, yet manageable. Native Americans, European colonials, Brazil, Mexico, the United States. The focus on northern and southern hemispheres, together, is refreshing in a genre that typically features one or the other. No overreach here.
Key Quote: "Above all, by the crudest and most effective measure of success, the United States became an unbeatable power in war in its own hemisphere and bade fair to challenge the powers of the Old World. These changes amounted to an inversion of what had previously been American 'normalcy': the common history of the hemisphere became divergent; and the centers of initiative shifted to the formerly unfavored north." - pp. 132-33
Bottom Line: Read this book if you want to better understand both halves of the Western Hemisphere and how they relate to each other.
