100 books like The Body of the Conquistador

By Rebecca Earle,

Here are 100 books that The Body of the Conquistador fans have personally recommended if you like The Body of the Conquistador. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food

Deborah Toner Author Of Alcohol and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Mexico

From my list on the history of food in Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a social and cultural historian of North America and Latin America, specializing in the history of alcohol, food, and identity. When I’m not researching, writing, or teaching about food history, I’m generally cooking, eating or thinking about food, perusing recipe books, or watching cookery programs on TV. I have been especially fascinated by all things Mexico since I read Bernal Díaz’s A True History of the Conquest of New Spain as a teenager, and I think Mexican cuisine is the best in the world. 

Deborah's book list on the history of food in Latin America

Deborah Toner Why did Deborah love this book?

I never thought I would be jealous of a footnote, but Planet Taco has one that says: “This chapter is based on a decade of international fieldwork eating Mexican food on five continents”! Whether or not you agree that Mexican food is the tastiest on earth, its history is extraordinarily complex and fascinating; Jeffrey Pilcher is the best historian to guide you through it. His first book, ¡Que vivan los tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity, opened my eyes to the world of food history many years ago. In Planet Taco, Pilcher examines the development of Mexican cuisine in dialogue with larger processes of globalization and ideas about authenticity and national identity, using the taco to unpack this fantastically “messy business”. 

By Jeffrey M. Pilcher,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Planet Taco as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

As late as the 1960s, tacos were virtually unknown outside Mexico and the American Southwest. Within fifty years the United States had shipped taco shells everywhere from Alaska to Australia, Morocco to Mongolia. But how did this tasty hand-held food-and Mexican food more broadly-become so ubiquitous?

In Planet Taco, Jeffrey Pilcher traces the historical origins and evolution of Mexico's national cuisine, explores its incarnation as a Mexican American fast-food, shows how surfers became global pioneers of Mexican food, and how Corona beer conquered the world. Pilcher is particularly enlightening on what the history of Mexican food reveals about the uneasy…


Book cover of Alcohol in Latin America: A Social and Cultural History

Deborah Toner Author Of Alcohol and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Mexico

From my list on the history of food in Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a social and cultural historian of North America and Latin America, specializing in the history of alcohol, food, and identity. When I’m not researching, writing, or teaching about food history, I’m generally cooking, eating or thinking about food, perusing recipe books, or watching cookery programs on TV. I have been especially fascinated by all things Mexico since I read Bernal Díaz’s A True History of the Conquest of New Spain as a teenager, and I think Mexican cuisine is the best in the world. 

Deborah's book list on the history of food in Latin America

Deborah Toner Why did Deborah love this book?

As a historian of alcohol, I sometimes get asked why I study something so niche; this book shows that alcohol history is anything but! The ten scholars who have contributed to Alcohol in Latin America cover issues of commerce, taxation, regulation, and state-building; the formation and expression of different ethnic, gender, class, and national identities; and concepts of progress, modernity, tradition, and authenticity. They discuss these issues over more than five hundred years of history, with reference to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, the Andes, Guatemala, and Mexico, and by drawing on archaeological, anthropological, literary, and marketing studies. It is incredibly wide-ranging. As a wine-lover, I found the chapters by Nancy Hanway and Steve Stein tracing the development of the Argentine wine industry from the 1860s to the 1990s especially interesting. 

By Gretchen Pierce (editor), Áurea Toxqui (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Alcohol in Latin America as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Aguardente, chicha, pulque, vino—no matter whether it’s distilled or fermented, alcohol either brings people together or pulls them apart. Alcohol in Latin America is a sweeping examination of the deep reasons why. This book takes an in-depth look at the social and cultural history of alcohol and its connection to larger processes in Latin America. Using a painting depicting a tavern as a metaphor, the authors explore the disparate groups and individuals imbibing as an introduction to their study. In so doing, they reveal how alcohol production, consumption, and regulation have been intertwined with the history of Latin America since…


Book cover of The True History of Chocolate

Deborah Toner Author Of Alcohol and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Mexico

From my list on the history of food in Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a social and cultural historian of North America and Latin America, specializing in the history of alcohol, food, and identity. When I’m not researching, writing, or teaching about food history, I’m generally cooking, eating or thinking about food, perusing recipe books, or watching cookery programs on TV. I have been especially fascinated by all things Mexico since I read Bernal Díaz’s A True History of the Conquest of New Spain as a teenager, and I think Mexican cuisine is the best in the world. 

Deborah's book list on the history of food in Latin America

Deborah Toner Why did Deborah love this book?

Chocolate is one of hundreds of foods that originated in the Americas and became globally important following the onset of European colonization in the sixteenth century. One of the best things about this book is that it devotes as much space to the story of chocolate’s importance in Maya, Aztec, and other Indigenous societies before colonization as to the global transformations that happened subsequently. As an avid cook, I loved the vivid reconstruction of varied historical recipes for preparing beverage chocolate. Plus, the story of how the book was written – I won’t spoil that – that you’ll find in the preface, is a beautiful testament to scholarly labors of love, and to love itself. 

By Sophie D. Coe, Michael D. Coe,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The True History of Chocolate as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Chocolate - 'the food of the Gods' - has had a long and eventful history. Its story is expertly told here by the doyen of Maya studies, Michael Coe, and his late wife, Sophie. The book begins 3,000 years ago in the Mexican jungles and goes on to draw on aspects of archaeology, botany and socio-economics. Used as currency and traded by the Aztecs, chocolate arrived in Europe via the conquistadors, and was soon a favourite drink with aristocrats. By the 19th century and industrialization, chocolate became a food for the masses - until its revival in our own time…


Book cover of ¡Tequila! Distilling the Spirit of Mexico

David Carey Jr. Author Of Distilling the Influence of Alcohol: Aguardiente in Guatemalan History

From my list on alcohol in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Why am I passionate about this?

Raised on happy hours on Cape Cod, MA patios with my Irish-American relatives, I long have been fascinated by how alcohol can bring people together and facilitate bonds that traverse both hardship and joy. During my travels and research in Mexico, Chile, Peru, Guatemala, and Ecuador, I observed how alcohol could both render families asunder and unite communities. As addiction makes clear, alcohol could hold tremendous power over individuals. But it also marked the identities of even the most casual drinkers. Throughout my research on other topics—crime, gender, medicine—alcohol consistently emerges as a crucial avenue of inquiry. The books listed below offer innovative and insightful ways of centering alcohol in scholarly narratives. 

David's book list on alcohol in Latin America and the Caribbean

David Carey Jr. Why did David love this book?

With clear and engaging prose, Gaytan reveals the power dynamics that shaped tequila’s trajectory in Mexico and abroad.

She traces tequila’s meteoric rise past other agave-derived drinks like pulque and mezcal. I really appreciate how she approaches her study as a sociologist but does not eschew history in her analysis. Although ancient Mayas were among the first to produce and consume tequila, its association with modernity can be attributed, in part, to modern marketers disassociating tequila from indigenous inebriation.

Even as she firmly grounds tequila in lo Mexicano or being Mexican, Gaytan also explores tequila’s influence and popularity in the United States. Her book reminded me how different my experience of drinking tequila in the United States has been from my enjoyment of tequila in cantinas in Mexico. 

By Marie Sarita Gaytán,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked ¡Tequila! Distilling the Spirit of Mexico as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Italy has grappa, Russia has vodka, Jamaica has rum. Around the world, certain drinks-especially those of the intoxicating kind-are synonymous with their peoples and cultures. For Mexico, this drink is tequila. For many, tequila can conjure up scenes of body shots on Cancun bars and coolly garnished margaritas on sandy beaches. Its power is equally strong within Mexico, though there the drink is more often sipped rather than shot, enjoyed casually among friends, and used to commemorate occasions from the everyday to the sacred. Despite these competing images, tequila is universally regarded as an enduring symbol of lo mexicano.

!Tequila!…


Book cover of Cacicas: The Indigenous Women Leaders of Spanish America, 1492-1825

Susan Kellogg Author Of Weaving the Past: A History of Latin America's Indigenous Women from the Prehispanic Period to the Present

From my list on the history of Native women in Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up in a sheltered environment on Long Island, NY, I had little sense of a larger world, except for seeing images of the Vietnam War. Going to college in the early 70s and becoming an anthropology major, the world began to open up, yet I hadn't experienced life outside the U.S. until my mid-20s as a graduate student living in Mexico to do dissertation research. That experience and travels to Guatemala, Peru, Cuba, and Costa Rica helped me to see how diverse Latin America is, and how real poverty and suffering are as well. Coming into my own as a historian, teacher, and writer, my fascination with women’s voices, experiences, and activism only grew.

Susan's book list on the history of Native women in Latin America

Susan Kellogg Why did Susan love this book?

Cacicas were women who held high status, positions of political authority, and/or communally-significant economic or other responsibilities in colonial Spanish American native societies.

This book offers compelling portraits of how colonial women strategized to maneuver around patriarchal limitations of Spanish law, especially because they could not hold formal offices in the colonial governing hierarchy (though sometimes they actually did).

The individually-authored essays in this collection provide insightful portraits of individual women in a variety of circumstances across a wide range of geographic locations and types of communities across the Caribbean, Mesoamerica, and Central and South American societies.

The reader will feel she or he learns something about these women as people defending themselves, their families, and peoples.

By Margarita R. Ochoa (editor), Sara V. Guengerich (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Cacicas as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The term cacica was a Spanish linguistic invention, a female counterpart to caciques, the Arawak word for male indigenous leaders in Spanish America. But the term's meaning was adapted and manipulated by natives, creating a new social stratum where it previously may not have existed. This book explores that transformation, a conscious construction and reshaping of identity from within.

Cacicas feature far and wide in the history of Spanish America, as female governors and tribute collectors and as relatives of ruling caciques - or their destitute widows. They played a crucial role in the establishment and success of Spanish rule,…


Book cover of Latin America and the Caribbean in the Global Context: Why care about the Americas?

Winston Dookeran Author Of The Caribbean on the Edge: The Political Stress of Stability, Equality, and Diplomacy

From my list on political stress of stability, equality, and diplomacy.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a student, I was intrigued by Newton’s laws of motion. As I grew older, I sought to understand how these laws apply in a real-world setting of economics and politics. I spent my full professional life in this search and held several positions – Minister of Finance, Governor of the Central Bank, Minister of Foreign Affairs. I was decorated over the years with several awards. I had a good education at the London School of Economics and at Harvard University. After it all, I still did not quite comprehend how Newton’s Laws work to advance the quality of life in communities and countries. The Caribbean on The Edge is a reflection of that journey.

Winston's book list on political stress of stability, equality, and diplomacy

Winston Dookeran Why did Winston love this book?

This book provides a synthesis of the ‘region’s place in world politics and the global economy.’ Its applicability to the Latin American region in the context of international relations theory is a salient feature of this book which lends credence to these insights in this sense, there is a commonality of thinking in both books, and adds intellectual creditability to the meshing of both logics. It is a key insight. 

By Betty Horwitz, Bruce M. Bagley,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Latin America and the Caribbean in the Global Context as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Current perspectives on Latin America's role in the world tend to focus on one question: Why is Latin America always falling behind? Analysts and scholars offer answers grounded in history, economic underdevelopment, or democratic consolidation. Bagley and Horwitz, however, shift the central question to ask why and to what extent does Latin America matter in world politics, both now and in the future.

This text takes a holistic approach to analyze Latin America's role in the international system. It invokes a combination of global, regional, and sub-regional levels to assess Latin America's insertion into a globalized world, in historical, contemporary,…


Book cover of Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Making of an Imperial Republic

Colin Mooers Author Of Imperial Subjects: Citizenship in an Age of Crisis and Empire

From my list on reader-friendly books imperialism and colonialism.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University. I have taught and written on political theory and cultural studies for over thirty years, specializing in theories of capitalism and imperialism. However, my main motivation for writing the books and articles I have published has had more to do with my life-long commitment to progressive social change and the political movements that can bring that change about. First and foremost, I have tried to make sometimes challenging theoretical and political concepts accessible to the informed reader and especially to those on the front lines of progressive political and social movements.

Colin's book list on reader-friendly books imperialism and colonialism

Colin Mooers Why did Colin love this book?

This updated edition of Grandin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book charts the long history of the United States’ imperial domination of Latin America through gunboat diplomacy, invasion, hard and soft coups, mercenary wars, and covert actions.

Often considered its ‘backyard,’ Latin America is where the United States “learned how to project its power, worked out effective and flexible tactics of extraterritorial administration, established legal precedents, and acquired its conception of itself as an empire like no other before it.” Grandin illustrates this history with numerous historical and contemporary examples, including the 1973 US-supported coup in Chile, which brought to power Augusto Pinochet’s bloody dictatorship.

With the help of University of Chicago economists Frederic Von Hayek and Milton Friedman, the dictatorship pioneered the first neoliberal imperial “workshop.” Chile would become the template for other attempts at regime change in the region, from the 1980s wars in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua to…

By Greg Grandin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Empire's Workshop as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Examining over a century of US intervention in Latin America, acclaimed historian Greg Grandin reveals how the region has long served as a laboratory for US foreign policy, providing generations of Washington policy makers with an opportunity to rehearse a broad range of diplomatic and military tactics - tactics that then were applied elsewhere in the world as the US became a global superpower. During the Great Depression, for instance, FDR's Good Neighbor policy taught the United States to use "soft power" effectively and provided a blueprint for its postwar "empire by invitation." In the 1980s, Reagan likewise turned to…


Book cover of Me Llamo Celia/My Name Is Celia: La Vida de Celia Cruz/The Life Of Celia Cruz

Bobbito Garcia Author Of Aim High, Little Giant, Aim High!

From my list on BIPOC Shorties for kids.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a parent who along with my co-parent is raising a Black and Puerto Rican child in a world that is consumed with misunderstanding our communities of people. We seek books that speak volumes to our core, and that can expand our son’s horizons so that he understands himself as well as others.

Bobbito's book list on BIPOC Shorties for kids

Bobbito Garcia Why did Bobbito love this book?

I honestly think I enjoyed this book even more than my son, ha ha!

The richness of the illustrations are stunning, and Celia’s narrative is groundbreaking. Ultimately, it’s a wonderful story told in both Spanish and English, which has worked to connect us to two languages that are dear to our family.

By Monica Brown, Rafael López (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Me Llamo Celia/My Name Is Celia as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This bilingual book allows young readers to enter Celia Cruz's life as she becomes a well-known singer in her homeland of Cuba, then moves to New York City and Miami where she and others create a new type of music called salsa. School Library Journal has named My Name is Celia "[a]n exuberant picture-book biography ...a brilliant introduction to a significant woman and her music."


Book cover of The World That Latin America Created: The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America in the Development Era

Carlos Eduardo Suprinyak Author Of The Political Economy of Latin American Independence

From my list on the history of political economy in Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a Brazilian economist working in Paris and dedicated to historical scholarship. I have always been deeply impressed by the political weight carried by economic arguments across Latin America. Debates on economic policy are typically contentious everywhere, but in Latin America, your alignment with different traditions of political economy can go a long way to determine your intellectual and political identity. At the same time, our condition as peripheral societies – and hence net importers of ideas from abroad – raises perennial questions about the meaning of a truly Latin American political economy. I hope this list will be a useful entry point for people similarly interested in these problems.

Carlos' book list on the history of political economy in Latin America

Carlos Eduardo Suprinyak Why did Carlos love this book?

The most recent entry on my list is already a landmark achievement.

Margarita Fajardo’s authoritative monograph places the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America – the incubator for the cepalinos who successfully challenged the postwar consensus on developmental policy – into the broader geopolitical history of the 20th century. This richly detailed study retraces the emergence of an intellectual and political movement that channeled discontent with the structural biases inherent in the global economic order into a cogent agenda of political economy for the peripheries of capitalism.

It also reveals how the fragmentation of the fragile postwar liberal consensus, in both North and South, eventually pushed this movement toward the high-powered framework of dependency theory, and thence into anti-establishment activism across the world.

By Margarita Fajardo,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The World That Latin America Created as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

How a group of intellectuals and policymakers transformed development economics and gave Latin America a new position in the world.

After the Second World War demolished the old order, a group of economists and policymakers from across Latin America imagined a new global economy and launched an intellectual movement that would eventually capture the world. They charged that the systems of trade and finance that bound the world's nations together were frustrating the economic prospects of Latin America and other regions of the world. Through the UN Economic Commission for Latin America, or CEPAL, the Spanish and Portuguese acronym, cepalinos…


Book cover of Studies in the History of Latin American Economic Thought

Carlos Eduardo Suprinyak Author Of The Political Economy of Latin American Independence

From my list on the history of political economy in Latin America.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a Brazilian economist working in Paris and dedicated to historical scholarship. I have always been deeply impressed by the political weight carried by economic arguments across Latin America. Debates on economic policy are typically contentious everywhere, but in Latin America, your alignment with different traditions of political economy can go a long way to determine your intellectual and political identity. At the same time, our condition as peripheral societies – and hence net importers of ideas from abroad – raises perennial questions about the meaning of a truly Latin American political economy. I hope this list will be a useful entry point for people similarly interested in these problems.

Carlos' book list on the history of political economy in Latin America

Carlos Eduardo Suprinyak Why did Carlos love this book?

A living illustration of the nexus between Rumania and Latin America in the field of political economy, this work is the English translation of a monograph written in Spanish by Popescu, a Rumanian economist who emigrated to Argentina after WWII.

Still unparalleled in scope, the book retraces the evolution of political economy in Spanish America since the early days of European domination in the continent, highlighting the dissemination of scholastic, physiocratic, and classical economic doctrines as well as their transformation in the hands of Latin Americans.

Tellingly, Raúl Prebisch does not occupy center stage, appearing instead as a simple epilogue to the long odyssey chronicled by Popescu.

By Oreste Popescu,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Studies in the History of Latin American Economic Thought as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is the first study of the development of economic thought in Latin America. It traces the development of economic ideas during five centuries and across the whole continent. It addresses a wide range of approaches to economic issues including:
* the scholastic tradition in Latin American economies
* the quantity theory of money
* cameralism
* human captal theory.


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Latin America, conquistadors, and the indigenous peoples of the Americas?

Latin America 122 books
Conquistadors 16 books