Silver, Sword, and Stone

Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story

Marie Arana

$57.95

Hardback

In stock
Ready to ship

QTY:

English

Simon & Schuster
27 August 2019

Biography: general; Development studies; History; History of the Americas; Politics & government; Development economics

Winner, American Library Association Booklist's Top of the List, 2019 Adult Nonfiction Longlisted for the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence

Against the background of a thousand years of vivid history, acclaimed writer Marie Arana tells the timely and timeless stories of three contemporary Latin Americans whose lives represent three driving forces that have shaped the character of the region: exploitation (silver), violence (sword), and religion (stone).

Leonor Gonzales lives in a tiny community perched 18,000 feet above sea level in the Andean cordillera of Peru, the highest human habitation on earth. Like her late husband, she works the gold mines much as the Indians were forced to do at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Illiteracy, malnutrition, and disease reign as they did five hundred years ago. And now, just as then, a miner's survival depends on a vast global market whose fluctuations are controlled in faraway places.

Carlos Buergos is a Cuban who fought in the civil war in Angola and now lives in a quiet community outside New Orleans. He was among hundreds of criminals Cuba expelled to the US in 1980. His story echoes the violence that has coursed through the Americas since before Columbus to the crushing savagery of the Spanish Conquest, and from 19th- and 20th-century wars and revolutions to the military crackdowns that convulse Latin America to this day.

Xavier Alb� is a Jesuit priest from Barcelona who emigrated to Bolivia, where he works among the indigenous people. He considers himself an Indian in head and heart and, for this, is well known in his adopted country. Although his aim is to learn rather than proselytize, he is an inheritor of a checkered past, where priests marched alongside conquistadors, converting the natives to Christianity, often forcibly, in the effort to win the New World. Ever since, the Catholic Church has played a central role in the political life of Latin America--sometimes for good, sometimes not.

In Silver, Sword, and Stone Marie Arana seamlessly weaves these stories with the history of the past millennium to explain three enduring themes that have defined Latin America since pre-Columbian times: the foreign greed for its mineral riches, an ingrained propensity to violence, and the abiding power of religion. What emerges is a vibrant portrait of a people whose lives are increasingly intertwined with our own.

By: Marie Arana
Imprint: Simon & Schuster
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 36mm
Weight: 723g
ISBN: 9781501104244
ISBN 10: 1501104241
Pages: 496
Publication Date: 27 August 2019
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Marie Arana was born in Lima, Peru. She is the author of the memoir American Chica, a finalist for the National Book Award; two novels, Cellophane and Lima Nights; and The Writing Life, a collection from her well-known column for The Washington Post. She lives in Washington, DC, and Lima, Peru.

Reviews for Silver, Sword, and Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story

Simon Bolivar has found the perfect biographer in Marie Arana, a literary journalist, brilliant novelist of South America, and wise historian as well. Her portrait of Bolivar is human and moving; she has written a powerful and epic life and times. --Evan Thomas, author of Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Struggle to Save the World Wonderful. . . . In Arana's energetic and highly readable telling, Bol var comes alive as having willed himself an epic life. . . . She brings great verve and literary flair to her biography of Bol var. --Hector Tobar The Los Angeles Times Arana is an indefatigable researcher, a perceptive historian, and a luminous writer, as shown in her defining, exhilarating biography of the great South American liberator Sim n Bol var. --Booklist (starred review, Top 10 Biographies of the Year) Thrilling, authoritative and revelatory, here at last is a biography of Bolivar, the maker of South America, that catches the sheer extraordinary unique adventure and titanic scale of his life with accessible narrative and scholarly judgement. --Simon Sebag Montefiore Finally, Bolivar gets the sweeping biography he deserves. He was the greatest leader in Latin American history, and his tale is filled with lessons about leadership and passion. This book reads like a wonderful novel but is researched like a masterwork of history. --Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs Bolivar is magisterial in scope, written with flair and an almost cinematic sense of history happening. . . . A monumental achievement destined to win some major literary prizes. --Joseph J. Ellis Washington Post Book World