As an English major my background in Spanish literature was unfortunately limited. I have begun a personal project to fill in some of these gaps and it is proving to be a wonderful experience that has certainly been rewarding thus far. "Torquemada" by Benito Perez Galdos offers one of the truly great characters of literature in my opinion. He is nothing short of a rascal and an outrage, but you will love him and the book and find it very difficult to put the book down once you start reading. The cultural mosaic of Madrid and Spanish bourgeois society for better and for worse is brought clearly to the reader. Galdos is certainly a writer that deserves more attention in North America and the international literary community. He is truly one of the greatest on the stage of world literature and accomplished writing.

Andres Bello strode like a giant across 19th century Latin America. A poet, educator, linguist, political leader, and skilled prose writer, he possessed a truly vast intellect. In these "Selected Writings," editor Ivan Jaksic and translator Frances M. Lopez-Morillas have made a small sample of his legacy--his collected works in Spanish fill 26 volumes--available to English-speaking readers.

Bello's prose and poetry in this anthology focus mainly on the topics of language, literature, education, history, and political science. Some of his more technical writings are a bit dry, and will, I imagine, appeal more to specialists in some of these fields than to the general reader. But to the discriminating general reader, this volume offers a wealth of intellectual delights and insights.

Among the book's many fine highlights are Bello's long poem "Allocution to Poetry," which captures a sweeping vison of Latin America, and an address delivered at the University of Chile in which he prophetically envisions the great Chilean authors who would follow him. His call for universal literacy in "On the Aims of Education" is evidence of a mind truly ahead of its time.

Although this is an excellent edition--it includes superb introductory materials, among them a fascinating chronology--there is room for improvement. Some of Bello's more reference-laden writings would, I believe, be more meaningful to a broader audience if they had been accompanied by more extensive annotations. Nevertheless, this is an outstanding book, and an excellent tribute to a man of truly towering intellect.

Dr. Ivan Jaksic's scholarly edition of Andres Bello's works constitutes an excellent anthology of the great humanist who was Bello. Translator Lopez-Morillas' rendering into English of Bello's nineteenth century Spanish denies validity to the old italian axiom "traduttore, tradittore" (translator equals traitor). It is impossible to summarize Andres Bello's numerous volumes on themes as varied as constitutional law, Spanish grammar, and the creation of the University in Chile: Jaksic's Selected Writings of Andres Bello gives the reader the most practical alternative. Gonzalo Palacios, Ph.D

Hard to follow at times, you get confused as to how many people are actually following him! It is sometimes slow reading. Yet, the informantion in the book is good.

To read so much live detail about the way of life of the original inhabitants of parts of Texas and the Southwest is to have one's very conceptions about these places changed. It's an amazing, short read and the editor helps with notes in critical places. I think this is basic reading for anyone even part-way interested in the history of Texas and neighboring states. Cabeza de Vaca's account covers hair-raising events which occurred in the 1530s right here on Galveston Island, so it gives a longer sense of post-Columbian history than one usually gets as a lay reader of Texas and Southwest history. I too don't know why more folks aren't talking about this book. I'm buying copies to give away.

I read this book for a Spanish literature course as an example of early Spanish writing in America. This story has value in that it provides information on the background of early Spanish exploration, the true motivations and intentions of the explorers (or conquistadors), and their encounters with the native people on the Texas and Florida coasts.

It is interesting to read about Texas as a foreign land as seen through the eyes of the author because I grew up there. It was fascinating to realize the adventures and drama that occured so many hundreds of years ago when two cultures collided and no one was positive who would dominate. We know today who did, but at that time, the master (conquistador) did become the slave (of the natives) for seven years. In this way, a valuable account of tribal life and culture is written first-hand, but many years after the events took place.

One thing I noticed is that Cabeza de Vaca still maintains a sense of superiority in that he never refers to any of the native people by their names in the book. It may be that he forgot the names over time. Or, he never considered it of importance because the natives were "barbarians" and intellectually inferior in his eyes. I'm also not sure that the author reveals the full truth of his role in the events that took place once he met up with the other conquistadors in Texas after his enslavement. He's a little too much the hero. While Cabeza de Vaca is somewhat sympathetic towards the native people, one feels that Cabeza de Vaca still looks upon the Europeans as explorers and evangelists, while those being explored and evangelized saw the Europeans as conquerors and gold-diggers. But we don't have their account.

Other than this, the book is very informative and filled with detailed information on geography and culture. I also purchased the Spanish version and so realized that the English translation is excellent.

It is an excellent book that provides a new point of view for those interested in the wide history of Spain.

The book does not give historical data on the facts of the history of Spain but on the circumstances which encouraged the Spaniards to act in a certain way or to accomplish certain not very well understood actions, like the colonization of America, the inquisition or the civil war.

The demystification of certain believes widely spread, like the understandable Spanish People behavior.

This Philosophy books teaches us a bout the importance of Spain in building up the western civilization and participation in the creation of Europe.

This book could have been a masterpiece. Delibes use of language is overwhelming and the shaping of the narrative voice is great. Nonetheless, when you keep such a repetitive monologue going on and on, the book can be boring. This is only for die hard Delibes fans.

Here We found a good book, but there are a lot of books by C. Jose Cela better than this one. This one brings the reader to a different Spain, and offers the opportunity of getting deeper in arural world. Anyway, surely his best book it's called La Colmena, not yet published in English, in which He describes the dark moments of the 50's in Spain, from a cultural and a post civil war point of view. I would recommend Journey to the Alcarria, but there are better ones.