Exploration and Conquest: The Americas After Columbus: 1500-1620

Relates the story of the the first European explorers and settlers to come to America and details their effect on the people they encountered there

This ambitious sequel to the Maestros’ The Discovery of the Americas begins with a revisionist summation of Christopher Columbus’s famous feats: the explorer “was not the first to discover the Americas. But his voyages led to the European exploration of the New World.” The book covers more than 130 years of exploration, presenting brief overviews of Magellan, Cortes, Pizarro, Hudson, Drake, Champlain et al. Betsy Maestro also discusses the effects of these incursions on native peoples; she touches upon the African slave trade, the decimation of the Aztec civilization and the general failure of Europeans to honor their agreements with Native Americans. While the writing is clear, the range of information may be too broad for the reader to absorb easily. Each topic receives only a paragraph or two, and important concepts are often reduced to a single sentence. More satisfying is the watercolor-and-pencil art, which vividly depicts the explorers and their exploits. Giulio Maestro captures the essence of his settings-the midnight blues of a nighttime sky at sea, the earthy yellows and browns of the American Southwest, the green, tiered mountains of Central America. Appendixes contain a table of dates; lists of explorers not mentioned in the text; useful summaries; and a list of Native American “contributions to the world.”