When I read book I usually take notes and store them here on LibraryThing. That way I can quickly look up the most interesting parts of any book I’ve read and recall what it was about. The number of notes is usually proportional to my interest in the book. Uninteresting books receive no notes at all, while insightful books garner many. However, this book, from which I didn’t take a single note, proved to be the exception to that rule.

I did not consider it useful to make notes because I would have had to make a new note on almost every page. This book is simply packed full of interesting and intelligent information about the evolution of the Spanish and British empires in America from initial contact all the way to independence. The recurring contrast between the Spanish empire and the British empire is a good heuristic device for illustrating, among other things, how the indigenous peoples and their later descendants were treated in various colonies, why the colonial economies and political organizations developed as they did and why different problems grew intractable in each empire.

I greatly enjoyed reading this book and it’s hard to overstate how much I learned from it. It put almost everything I knew about North and South America into historical perspective. Prior to reading this book I had not realized how many aspects of contemporary American society can be traced back directly to the decisions and historical accidents that took place in the Spanish and English colonies. I could give examples of these decisions and accidents in this review, but they would not do justice to the wealth of wisdom that this book contains on every page. This is one the few books which I resolved to read again almost immediately after starting it for the first time. In other words, no notes necessary.

A detailed comparison of the British and Spanish Empires in America. Thoughtful, comprehensive, and revealing. ( )