Simón Bolívar is the preeminent symbol of Latin America and the subject of seemingly endless posthumous attention. Interpreted and reinterpreted in biographies, histories, political writings, speeches, and works of art and fiction, he has been a vehicle for public discourse for the past two centuries. Robert T. Conn follows the afterlives of Bolívar across the Americas, tracing his presence in a range of competing but interlocking national stories. How have historians, writers, statesmen, filmmakers, and institutions reworked his life and writings to make cultural and political claims? How has his legacy been interpreted in the countries whose territories he liberated, as well as in those where his importance is symbolic, such as the United States? In answering these questions, Conn illuminates the history of nation building and hemispheric globalism in the Americas.

An authoritative portrait of the Latin-American warrior-statesman examines his life against a backdrop of the tensions of nineteenth-century South America, covering his achievements as a strategist, abolitionist, and diplomat.

Chronicles the life of Simón Bolívar, exploring his political career, leadership dynamics, rule over the people of Spanish America, and impact on world history.

Profiles the South American general and revolutionary who helped liberate several South American countries from Spanish domination.

She was a friend, lover, and confidante of charismatic Spanish American independence hero Simón Bolívar and, after her death, a nationalist icon in her own right. Yet authors generally have chosen either to romanticize Manuela Sáenz or to discount her altogether. For Glory and Bolivar: The Remarkable of Life of Manuela Sáenz, by contrast, offers a comprehensive and clear-eyed biography of her. Based on unprecedented archival research, it paints a vivid portrait of the Quito-born "Libertadora," revealing both an exceptional figure and a flesh-and-blood person whose life broadly reflected the experiences of women during Spanish America's turbulent Age of Revolution. Already married at the time of her meeting with the famous Liberator, Sáenz abandoned her husband in order to become not only Bolívar's romantic companion, but also his official archivist, a member of his inner circle, and one of his most loyal followers. She played a central role in Spanish South America's independence drama and eventually in developments leading to the consolidation of new nations. Pamela Murray, for the first time, closely examines Sáenz's political trajectory including her vital, often-overlooked years in exile. She exposes the myths that still surround her. She offers, in short, a nuanced and much-needed historical perspective, one that balances recognition of Sáenz's uniqueness with awareness of the broader forces that shaped this dynamic nineteenth-century woman.

This biography of the great Latin American revolutionary reveals the man behind the legend—“magisterial in scope . . . a monumental achievement” (The Washington Post Book World). Simón Bolívar freed six countries from Spanish rule, traveled more than 75,000 miles on horseback to do so, and became the greatest figure in Latin American history. He fought battle after battle in punishing terrain, forged uncertain coalitions of competing forces and races, lost his beautiful wife soon after they married, and died young, uncertain whether his achievements would endure. Drawing on a wealth of primary documents, novelist and journalist Marie Arana brilliantly captures early nineteenth-century South America and the explosive tensions that helped revolutionize Bolívar. From his battlefield victories to his ill-fated marriage and legendary love affairs, Bolívar emerges as a man of many facets: fearless general, brilliant strategist, consummate diplomat, passionate abolitionist, gifted writer, and flawed politician. A major work of history, Bolívar colorfully portrays a dramatic life even as it explains the rivalries and complications that bedeviled Bolívar’s tragic last days. It is also a stirring declaration of what it means to be a South American.

This volume of essays on the life and legacy of Simón Bolívar looks at the impact of "the Liberator" as warrior, political thinker and leader, internationalist, continentalist, reformer, and revolutionary. An appraisal of Bolívar's role in the Spanish American wars of independence, this offers an explanation of why the Bolívarian legend and cult has persisted.