Overlooking the significance of America’s Hispanic past, the
United States is typically perceived as an offshoot of Britain, with its
history unfolding east to west, beginning with the first settlers in Jamestown.
In an absorbing narrative, Felipe Fernández-Armesto begins with the explorers
and conquistadors who planted Spain’s first colonies in Puerto Rico, Florida
and the Southwest in the sixteenth century. Missionaries and rancheros carry
Spain’s expansive impulse into the late eighteenth century, settling in
California, mapping the American interior to the Rockies and charting the
Pacific coast. The nineteenth-century triumph of Anglo-America in the West is
followed by the twentieth-century Hispanic resurgence, spreading from the West
to cities including Chicago, Miami and Boston. Today’s plural America is the
product of its past.
