The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico

Hardcover Cloth 468 pages. Condition Good NO Dust Jacket. A great reading copy of the Reprint edition 1956. Beautiful worn black boards with silver and green embossing shows off this tight and sound copy with no marks, highlights or bookplates. Book is worn with stains on front and top edge. Edges have the usual yellowing. Pages are lightly toned with minor signs of wear and/or age. Not an ex-library, book club or remainder copy.

Bernal Diaz del Castillo(1495-1584) served under Cortez through the entire Mexican campaign, and his narrative, one of only four extant firsthand accounts, is both an invaluable historical document and a spectacular epic. He was with Cortez when the latter sank the ships, thus committing the small band of conquistadors irrevocably to the Conquest; he was privy to the counsels of the leaders and was at hand when Montezuma was made a prisoner in his own palace.

Bernal fought in over a hundred battles and skirmishes against an enemy who made living sacrifices of their prisoners. These things he saw and recorded in a bold blunt voice whose immediacy, in Maudslay's classic translation, reaches across the centuries to invite readers to witness for themselves the horrors and wonders of the initial, apocalyptic clash between two great civilizations.