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The Spanish Empire is famous for being, at its height, the realm upon which "the sun never set." It stretched from the Philippines to Europe by way of the Americas. And yet we know relatively little about how Spain managed to move that crucial currency of governance—paper—over such enormous distances. Moreover, we know even less about how those distances were perceived and understood by people living in the empire. This book takes up these unknowns and proposes that by examining how documents operated in the Spanish empire, we can better understand how the empire was built and, most importantly, how knowledge was created. The author argues that even in such a vast realm, knowledge was bu...
A true story of violence and punishment that illuminates a transformative moment in Guatemalan history On the morning of July 1, 1800, a surveyor and mapmaker named Cayetano Díaz opened the window of his study in Guatemala City to find a horrific sight: a pair of severed breasts. Offering a meticulously researched and evocative account of the quest to find the perpetrator and understand the motives behind such a brutal act, this volume pinpoints the sensational crime as a watershed moment in Guatemalan history that radically changed the nature of justice and the established social order. Sylvia Sellers-García reveals how this bizarre and macabre event spurred an increased attention to crime that resulted in more forceful policing and reflected important policy decisions not only in Guatemala but across Latin America. This fascinating book is both an engaging criminal case study and a broader consideration of the forces shaping Guatemala City at the brink of the modern era.
Imagining Histories of Colonial Latin America teaches imaginative and distinctive approaches to the practice of history through a series of essays on colonial Latin America. It demonstrates ways of making sense of the past through approaches that aggregate more than they dissect and suggest more than they conclude. Sidestepping more conventional approaches that divide content by subject, source, or historiographical “turn,” the editors seek to take readers beyond these divisions and deep into the process of historical interpretation. The essays in this volume focus on what questions to ask, what sources can reveal, what stories historians can tell, and how a single source can be interpreted in many ways.
The award-winning debut novel that ?brings to mind the atmosphere and tension of Gabriel García Márquez.?( Katharine Weber, author of The Little Women) Nítido Amán knows he was born in Guatemala, but he doesn?t know why his family left. Raised in the States by his immigrant parents, they never talked about it. When Nítido loses his father to Alzheimer?s disease, his despondent mother grows increasingly silent and Nítido realizes that his links to the past are disappearing. Seeking answers, Nítido travels to Guatemala against his mother?s wishes. Upon his arrival in the small town of Río Roto, he is mistaken for the new priest, and decides to play the part. From his parishioners, he catches tantalizing and frightening glimpses of the buried history he?s aching to know. In a place shrouded in secrets, Nítido is at once determined and frightened to unearth the unnamed horrors it has seen. With her elegant, hypnotic prose, this marks Sellers- García?s arrival as a distinctive new voice in fiction.
"One of the most thoughtfully crafted works of true crime I've ever seen."--Molly Odintz, CrimeReads senior editor On the morning of July 1, 1800, a surveyor and mapmaker named Cayetano Díaz opened the window of his study in Guatemala City to find a horrific sight: a pair of severed breasts. Offering a meticulously researched and evocative account of the quest to find the perpetrator and understand the motives behind such a brutal act, The Woman on the Windowsill pinpoints the last decade of the eighteenth-century as a watershed moment in Guatemalan history, when the nature of justice changed dramatically. Sylvia Sellers-García reveals how this bizarre and macabre event came with an increased attention to crime that resulted in more forceful policing and reflected important policy decisions not only in Guatemala but throughout the Spanish Empire. This engaging true crime story serves as a backdrop for the broader consideration of the forces shaping Guatemala City at the brink of the modern era.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “It’s Lovecraft meets the Brontës in Latin America, and after a slow-burn start Mexican Gothic gets seriously weird.”—The Guardian ONE OF TIME’S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • WINNER OF THE LOCUS AWARD • NOMINATED FOR THE BRAM STOKER AWARD ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, NPR, The Washington Post, Tordotcom, Marie Claire, Vox, Mashable, Men’s Health, Library Journal, Book Riot, LibraryReads An isolated mansion. A chillingly charismatic aristocrat. And a brave socialite drawn to expose their treacherous secrets. . . . From the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow comes “a terrifying twist on classi...
This comprehensive study of the traditional Chinese craft of paper sculpture documents the ancient craft as it exists today in Taiwan.
"Inconceivable!"; "Long hair don't care"; "You shall not pass!"; "I'll be back." The way we read these lines - whether or not you picture Gandalf standing at the edge of a cliff and hear the deep monotone of the Terminator - makes it clear that media consumption affects our everyday lives,language, and how we identify as part of a group.Millennials Talking Media examines how U.S. millennial friends embed both old media (books, songs, movies, and TV shows) and new media (YouTube videos, videogames, and internet memes) in their everyday talk for particular interactional purposes. Sylvia Sierra presents multiple case studies featuringthe recorded talk of millennial friends to demonstrate how an...
The Age of the Discovery of the Americas was concurrent with the Age of Discovery in science. In The Alchemy of Conquest, Ralph Bauer explores the historical relationship between the two, focusing on the connections between religion and science in the Spanish, English, and French literatures about the Americas during the early modern period. As sailors, conquerors, travelers, and missionaries were exploring "new worlds," and claiming ownership of them, early modern men of science redefined what it means to "discover" something. Bauer explores the role that the verbal, conceptual, and visual language of alchemy played in the literature of the discovery of the Americas and in the rise of an early modern paradigm of discovery in both science and international law. The book traces the intellectual and spiritual legacies of late medieval alchemists such as Roger Bacon, Arnald of Villanova, and Ramon Llull in the early modern literature of the conquest of America in texts written by authors such as Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, José de Acosta, Nicolás Monardes, Walter Raleigh, Thomas Harriot, Francis Bacon, and Alexander von Humboldt.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic and Velvet Was the Night comes a dreamy reimagining of The Island of Doctor Moreau set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Mexico. 'ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022' - She Reads 'The imagination of Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a thing of wonder, restless and romantic, fearless in the face of genre, embracing the polarities of storytelling' - New York Times Carlota Moreau: A young woman, growing up in a distant and luxuriant estate, safe from the conflict and strife of the Yucatán peninsula, the only daughter of a genius - or a madman. Montgomery Laughton: A melancholic overseer with a tragic past and a propensity for al...