University Libraries Promotion and Tenure Recognition

William H. Prescott's Conquest of Mexico is not just one of the classic works of Latin American historiography, but one of the great works of readable, epic historical scholarship written in the English language. First published in 1843, the book is inevitably dated in terms of its methods and attitudes. But its narrative remains as gripping as it was to its wide nineteenth-century readership, and modern readers looking less for reliable facts about the Aztecs and the Spanish conquistadors and more for examples of perfectly paced narrative style and brilliant historical imagination and could do no better than this book. In my view, the Folio edition is the superlative modern edition. Based on an 1890 edition it retains the classic look of the full-size nineteenth-century volumes, with the addition of Folio's beautiful packaging, an intelligent selection of high-quality illustrations (both in color and black & white), and a brief but exemplary introduction by Felipe Fernández-Armesto.