The Making of a World Power, 1492-1763

Spain's Road to Empire

An immensely exotic and exciting subject brilliantly handled.

HENRY KAMEN was most recently Visiting Professor of History at the University of Chicago.  He is the author of PHILIP OF SPAIN and lives in Barcelona.

How did a barren, thinly populated country, somewhat isolated from the rest of Europe become the world's first superpower?  Henry Kamen's tremendous new book takes full advantage of its great theme to recreate the dazzling world of militant Castile from the fall of Moorish Granada and Columbus' first voyage to the imperial collapse over three centuries later.  There is no better account in English of this immense, brutal adventure - a ceaseless quest for land, gold and slaves that made Spain, both for its conquered peoples and much of the rest of Europe, into a rapacious nightmare.

Henry Kamen

The Exiles Who Created Spanish Culture

Spain has had a long history of exiles. Since the destruction of the last Muslim territories in Granada in 1492, wave after wave of its people have been driven from the country. <br/>
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<I>The Disinherited</I> paints a vivid picture of Spain&rsquo;s diverse exiles, from Muslims, Jews and Protestants to Liberals, Socialists and Communists, artists, writers and musicians. Kamen describes the ways in which many of these expelled citizens have shaped Spanish culture &ndash; or impoverished it by leaving &ndash; and enriched their adopted homes through their creative responses to exile and to encounters with new worlds, Picasso, Mir&oacute;, Dali and Bu&ntilde;uel among them. Henry Kamen&rsquo;s compelling and sympathetic account tells the story of their incalculable impact on the world.

The Disinherited

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