Stolen Continents: 500 Years of Conquest and Resistance in the Americas

1992

Tenth Anniversary Edition

An international bestseller, Stolen Continents is a history of the Americas unlike any other. This fascinating volume chronicles the conquest and arrival of five great American cultures—in their own words. Ronald Wright give voice to the Aztec, Maya, Inca, Cherokee, and Iroquois, quoting their authentic speech and writing and illuminating their strange, tragic experience—including, in a new afterward, incidents that bring us into the twenty-first century. Covering the more than five hundred years since Europeans first set foot in the New World, Wright weaves contemporary accounts with his own incisive historical narrative to created an indispensable record, on that is powerful, vivid, and accurate.

Time Among the Maya: Travels in Belize, Guatemala, and Mexico

1989

The Maya of Central America have been called the Greeks of the New World. In the first millennium A.D., they created the intellectually and artistically advanced civilization of the Americas. Throughout the ensuing centuries, as neighbouring empires fell in warfare and to the Spanish invasion, the Maya endured, shaken but never destroyed.

In Time Among the Maya, Ronald Wright’s journey takes him not only to the land of the Maya, but also among the five million people who speak Maya languages and preserve a Mayan identity today. His travels begin in tiny Belize, exploring the jungles and mountains of Guatemala, bloodstained by civil war, and end in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Embracing history, politics, anthropology, and literature, this book is both a fascinating travel memoir and the study of a civilization.

Cut Stones and Crossroads: A Journey in Peru

1984

Travelling through Peru, tracing the history of the Incas from their royal cities of Cusco and Machu Picchu to their mythical origin in Lake Titicaca, Ronald Wright explores a country of contrasts—between Spanish and Indian, past and present, coastal desert and mountainous interior.

In his highly entertaining and perceptive account, Wright brings to life a complex culture, a land of ancient traditions seeking its place in the modern world. Embracing history, politics, anthropology and literature, Cut Stones and Crossroads is both a fascinating travel memoir and the study of a civilization by a writer who has won international awards as both a novelist and historian.