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.

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Honours

Gordon Montador Award
CBA Nomination Author of the Year 1992

Reviews

“A counter-history that challenges all of our comfortable assumptions.”
Los Angeles Times

“Fine and Thought Provoking.”
Washington Post

“Excellent… Redresses the balance between the invaders and the invaded.”
Sunday Times

“Shows the devastation perpetrated by Columbus and others on the native peoples of the Americas.”
New York Times Book Review

“Wright goes about his task with white-hot passion.”
Los Angeles Times

“Wright is a historical philosopher with a profound understanding of other cultures: this book is a balanced and moving contribution to the vicious debate aroused.”
Independent

“Clear and concise history detailing the experiences of Native Americans on both continents from 1492 to 1990, from travel-writer and Mayan specialist Wright (Time Among the Maya, 1989; On Fiji Islands, 1986; etc.). Rather than attempt a comprehensive rendering of the centuries of genocide practiced by those who came in the wake of Columbus, Wright sensibly opts to present a few of the “highlights”. The savagery practiced against five major cultures—the Maya, Inca, Aztec, Cherokee, and Iroquois—and their responses appear in three stages, encompassing five hundred years: the initial periods of contact in each case; the hard and bloody struggles of these peoples once the battle was joined; and the modern phase, in which resistance continues along with the resolve to endure. Using contemporary native accounts wherever possible, in the belief that the white version has been heard often enough, Wright recounts Montezuma’s failed strategy to welcome Cortez as an equal, which led to his palace becoming a prison; the Cherokee Nation’s willingness two centuries later to emulate Western civilization, which only brought forced removal to Oklahoma and death along the Trail of Tears; and other base betrayals. Even with their societies largely destroyed, however, retention of an indigenous identity for the Incan descendants in Peru and their Mayan counterparts in Guatemala, and events such as last year’s tense standoff between defiant Iroquois and thousands of Canadian troops can be seen, Wright says, as evidence that a determined native resistance continues. Familiar facts but a distinctive viewpoint: an intensely partisan chronicle of centuries of dishonor, written in a fluid, vivid style.”
Kirkus Reviews

Format: Paperback, 430 pages
Publisher: Penguin Canada
ISBN 10: 0-143-01500-1
ISBN 13: 978-0-143-01500-0

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.

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Honours

A Trillium Book Award winner.

Reviews

“Time Among the Maya shows Ronald Wright to be . . . an historical philosopher with a profound understanding of other cultures.”
Jan Morris

“Wright’s unpretentious narrative blends anthropology, archaeology, history, and politics with his own entertaining excursions and encounters, and . . . teaches us a lot about the way a culture endures.”
The New Yorker

“Marking his time with the ancient Mayan calendar, a travel writer explores the ruins and villages of Belize, Guatemala and Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. He ‘weaves strands of popular anthropology, Guatemala’s politics of menace and odd encounters with half-assimilated Indians as though he were creating his own serape…’”
The New York Times, New and Noteworthy

Format: Paperback, 464 pages
Publisher: Penguin Canada
ISBN-10: 0-805-01470-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-143-05437-5

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.

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Reviews

“There is much to praise in this excellent book.”
Washington Post

“Wright expertly outline the politics and culture of a nations struggling to come to terms with the abrupt collapse of one world and the fitful emergence of the next.”
Globe and Mail

“The book is a marvelous mixture of science and color reporting, antiquities and contemporary politics.”
Christian Science Monitor

“Ronald Wright is a superb travel writer with a vivid historical imagination… [He] describes ‘the two worlds of Peru with vigueur, enthusiasm, affection and a sad, controlled anger.”
The Times Literary Supplement

Format: Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN-10-0-141-00026-0
ISBN-13-978-0-141-00026-8