Bolivar

This fabulous book tells not only of Bolivar’s struggle to create an independent united states of South America, but why. The author graphically describes what it means to be a colony, subject to Crown rule. The control exerted by Spain over her colonies was nothing less than feudal. This book illuminates what it is like to have your country pillaged as a colony. Franklin Roosevelt’s original 1941 reason for going to war, if we had to, was to help liberate all the enchained European colonies through a treatise called the Atlantic Charter. 

In 1813, a rather obscure Venezuelan colonel began a military campaign that ultimately liberated six countries from Spanish rule, putting an end to Spanish control of much of South America that had begun with Pizarro’s conquest of the Inca Empire nearly three centuries earlier. Arana’s book tells in vivid detail how the revolutionary events unfolded and does an admirable job of bringing to life this talented and charismatic liberator.