Spain: The Centre of the World 1519-1682 - Hardcover

Goodwin, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1408830108 ISBN 13: 9781408830109

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015

Synopsis

In the sixteenth century, the Spaniards became the first nation in history to have worldwide reach; across most of Europe to the Americas, the Philippines, and India. Goodwin tells the story of Spain and the Spaniards, from great soldiers like the Duke of Alba to literary figures and artists such as El Greco, Velázquez, Cervantes, and Lope de Vega, and the monarchs who ruled over them.

At the beginning of the modern age, Spaniards were caught between the excitement of change and a medieval world of chivalry and religious orthodoxy, they experienced a turbulent existential angst that fueled an exceptional Golden Age, a fluorescence of art, literature, poetry, and which inspired new ideas about International Law, merchant banking, and economic and social theory.

About this title

Review:

This is history as it should be but so rarely is. Never, since Richard Cobb's great books on ancien régime France, has an English historian written on the history of a foreign country so much from the inside, with such intense love and flair and intimacy. The result is a gourmet's delight of a book: to be devoured greedily and digested at length and with pleasure (David Starkey)

This is a vivid blend of grand narrative and colourful anecdote, written with pace, verve and a sharp sense of time and place. Dr Goodwin has dug deep in the archives, re-read the chronicles and come up with fresh insights that bring the politics and culture of early-modern Spain into a new alignment. A feast for both the general reader and the specialist (B. W. Ife, Cervantes Professor of Spanish, King’s College London, Emeritus)

Book Description:

Four hundred years ago, Spain was the epicenter of the largest empire in history and Spaniards laid the foundations of the modern western world

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1408830108
• ISBN 13: 9781408830109
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 608