Bolivar American Liberator 5th Edition Marie Arana by Marie Arana 9781439124956, 1439124957, B008J4PNX8 instant download after payment.

It is astonishing that Simón Bolívar, the great Liberator of South America, is not better known in the United States. He freed six countries from Spanish rule, traveled more than 75,000 miles on horseback to do so, & became the greatest figure in Latin American history. His life is epic, heroic, straight out of Hollywood: he fought battle after battle in punishing terrain, forged uncertain coalitions of competing forces & races, lost his beautiful wife soon after they married & never remarried (although he did have a succession of mistresses, including one who held up the revolution & another who saved his life), & he died relatively young, uncertain whether his achievements would endure.

Drawing on a wealth of primary documents, novelist & journalist Marie Arana brilliantly captures early nineteenth-century South America & the explosive tensions that helped revolutionize Bolívar. In 1813 he launched a campaign for the independence of Colombia & Venezuela, commencing a dazzling career that would take him across the rugged terrain of South America, from Amazon jungles to the Andes mountains. From his battlefield victories to his ill-fated marriage & legendary love affairs, Bolívar emerges as a man of many facets: fearless general, brilliant strategist, consummate diplomat, passionate abolitionist, gifted writer, & flawed politician. 

A major work of history, Bolívar colorfully portrays a dramatic life even as it explains the rivalries & complications that bedeviled Bolívar’s tragic last days. It is also a stirring declaration of what it means to be a South American.

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“Thrilling, authoritative & revelatory, here at last is a biography of Bolivar, the maker of South America, that catches the sheer extraordinary unique adventure & titanic scale of his life with accessible narrative & scholarly judgement.” – Simon Sebag Montefiore