A New History of Spanish Writing, 1939 to the 1990s explores the diversity of some sixty years of imaginative writing by Spaniards, its interactions with Spain's peculiarly dramatic history since the end of its Civil War, and its wider thematic significance. It covers the famous and canonical texts of the most recent in Modern Spanish literature but also explores areas less well-known outside Spain (essays and editorials, queer narrative, new poetry, comics, and texts of the militant and reactionary Right). More space than is usual in literary histories is allowed for commentary on famous texts, but the book also makes room for the marginalized and for socially contextualized explorations of the interconnectedness of various forms of writing. The overall structure is not chronological but thematic, dealing with abstract and topical issues such as silence, the family, or realism.

An Economist Book of the Year, 2001. In the 18th century, a debate ensued over the French naturalist Buffon’s contention that the New World was in fact geologically new. Historians, naturalists, and philosophers clashed over Buffon’s view. This book maintains that the “dispute” was also a debate over historical authority: upon whose sources and facts should naturalists and historians reconstruct the history of the New World and its people. In addressing this question, the author offers a strikingly novel interpretation of the Enlightenment.

A sweeping, authoritative history of 16th-century Spain and its legendary conquistadors, whose ambitious and morally contradictory campaigns propelled a small European kingdom to become one of the formidable empires in the world “The depth of research in this book is astonishing, but even more impressive is the analytical skill Cervantes applies. . . . [He] conveys complex arguments in delightfully simple language, and most importantly knows how to tell a good story.” —The Times (London) Over the few short decades that followed Christopher Columbus's first landing in the Caribbean in 1492, Spain conquered the two most powerful civilizations of the Americas: the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru. Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, and the other explorers and soldiers that took part in these expeditions dedicated their lives to seeking political and religious glory, helping to build an empire unlike any the world had ever seen. But centuries later, these conquistadors have become the stuff of nightmares. In their own time, they were glorified as heroic adventurers, spreading Christian culture and helping to build an empire unlike any the world had ever seen. Today, they stand condemned for their cruelty and exploitation as men who decimated ancient civilizations and carried out horrific atrocities in their pursuit of gold and glory. In Conquistadores, acclaimed Mexican historian Fernando Cervantes—himself a descendent of one of the conquistadors—cuts through the layers of myth and fiction to help us better understand the context that gave rise to the conquistadors' actions. Drawing upon previously untapped primary sources that include diaries, letters, chronicles, and polemical treatises, Cervantes immerses us in the late-medieval, imperialist, religious world of 16th-century Spain, a world as unfamiliar to us as the Indigenous peoples of the New World were to the conquistadors themselves. His thought-provoking, illuminating account reframes the story of the Spanish conquest of the New World and the half-century that irrevocably altered the course of history.

Since the early modern era, historians and observers of Spain, both within the country and beyond it, have identified a peculiarly Spanish disdain for work, especially manual labor, and have seen it as a primary explanation for that nation's alleged failure to develop like the rest of Europe. In "Lazy, Improvident People," the historian Ruth MacKay examines the origins of this deeply ingrained historical prejudice and cultural stereotype. MacKay finds these origins in the ilustrados, the Enlightenment intellectuals and reformers who rose to prominence in the late eighteenth century. To advance their own, patriotic project of rationalization and progress, they disparaged what had gone before. Relying in part on late medieval and early modern political treatises about "vile and mechanical" labor, they claimed that previous generations of Spaniards had been indolent and backward. Through a close reading of the archival record, MacKay shows that such treatises and dramatic literature in no way reflected the actual lives of early modern artisans, who were neither particularly slothful nor untalented. On the contrary, they behaved as citizens, and their work was seen as dignified and essential to the common good. MacKay contends that the ilustrados' profound misreading of their own past created a propagandistic myth that has been internalized by subsequent intellectuals. MacKay's is thus a book about the notion of Spanish exceptionalism, the ways in which this notion developed, and the burden and skewed vision it has imposed on Spaniards and outsiders. "Lazy, Improvident People" will fascinate not only historians of early modern and modern Spain but all readers who are concerned with the process by which historical narratives are formed, reproduced, and given authority.

Developing Writing Skills in Spanish is designed to be used as a classroom text, self study material, or simply as a resource on writing. It provides intermediate and advanced level students of Spanish with the necessary skills to become competent and confident writers in the Spanish language.

First published in 1961, A New History of Spanish Literature has been a much-used resource for generations of students. The book has now been completely revised and updated to include extensive discussion of Spanish literature of the past thirty years. Richard E. Chandler and Kessel Schwartz, both longtime students of the literature, write authoritatively about every Spanish literary work of consequence. From the earliest extant writings though the literature of the 1980s, they draw on the latest scholarship. Unlike most literary histories, this one treats each genre fully in its own section, thus making it easy for the reader to follow the development of poetry, the drama, the novel, other prose fiction, and nonfiction prose. Students of the first edition have found this method particularly useful. However, this approach does not preclude study of the literature by period. A full index easily enables the reader to find all references to any individual author or book. Another noteworthy feature of the book, and one omitted from many books of this kind, is the comprehensive attention the authors accord nonfiction prose, including, for example, essays, philosophy, literary criticism, politics, and historiography. Encyclopedic in scope yet concise and eminently readable, the revised edition of A New History of Spanish Literature bids fair to be the standard reference well into the next century.