A groundbreaking history of the entire Western Hemisphere, from prehistory to the present, by one of the world's most exciting historians. In The Americas, the incomparable Fernandez-Armesto demonstrates that of all the inherited frames through which we view the world, few are more limiting than the tidy separation between the enlightened, "first world" United States and Canada, and behind a high wall, the more problematic "Latin America." With his trademark range and independence of thought, Fernandez-Armesto sweeps aside these shopworn constructions and reveals the greater whole. The Americas connects all the dots, showing us why it's impossible to understand the history of North, Central, and South America in isolation. From the emergence of the first human civilizations through the arrival of Europeans and up until today, the land mass has been bound together in a complex web of interrelationships - from migration and trade to religion, culture, food, and the spread of political ideas. Further, for most of human history, it was the south that dominated the north - and, as Fernandez-Armesto argues in his provocative conclusion, it might well again. Embodying important new conceptions of cross-cultural exchange and conflict, The Americas is a book that will genuinely reshape the debate...