General & Miscellaneous Latin American History, South American History, Historical Biography, Political Biography, Latin America & the Caribbean - Politics & Government
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Overview
It is astonishing that Simón Bolívar, the great Liberator of South America, is not better known in the United States. He freed six countries from Spanish rule, traveled more than 75,000 miles on horseback to do so, and became the greatest figure in Latin American history. His life is epic, heroic, straight out of Hollywood: he fought battle after battle in punishing terrain, forged uncertain coalitions of competing forces and races, lost his beautiful wife soon after they married and never remarried (although he did have a succession of mistresses, including one who held up the revolution and another who saved his life), and he died relatively young, uncertain whether his achievements would endure.
Drawing on a wealth of primary documents, novelist and journalist Marie Arana brilliantly captures early nineteenth-century South America and the explosive tensions that helped revolutionize Bolívar. In 1813 he launched a campaign for the independence of Colombia and Venezuela, commencing a dazzling career that would take him across the rugged terrain of South America, from Amazon jungles to the Andes mountains. From his battlefield victories to his ill-fated marriage and legendary love affairs, Bolívar emerges as a man of many facets: fearless general, brilliant strategist, consummate diplomat, passionate abolitionist, gifted writer, and flawed politician. A major work of history, Bolívar colorfully portrays a dramatic life even as it explains the rivalries and complications that bedeviled Bolívar’s tragic last days. It is also a stirring declaration of what it means to be a South American.
Synopsis
A sweeping narrative worthy of a Hollywood epic, this is the authoritative biography of the warrior-statesman who was the greatest figure in Latin American history.It is astonishing that Simón Bolívar, the great Liberator of South America, is not better known in the United States. He freed six countries from Spanish rule, traveled more than 75,000 miles on horseback to do so, and became the greatest figure in Latin American history. His life is epic, heroic, straight out of Hollywood: he fought battle after battle in punishing terrain, forged uncertain coalitions of competing forces and races, lost his beautiful wife soon after they married and never remarried (although he did have a succession of mistresses, including one who held up the revolution and another who saved his life), and he died relatively young, uncertain whether his achievements would endure.
Drawing on a wealth of primary documents, novelist and journalist Marie Arana brilliantly captures early nineteenth-century South America and the explosive tensions that helped revolutionize Bolívar. In 1813 he launched a campaign for the independence of Colombia and Venezuela, commencing a dazzling career that would take him across the rugged terrain of South America, from Amazon jungles to the Andes mountains. From his battlefield victories to his ill-fated marriage and legendary love affairs, Bolívar emerges as a man of many facets: fearless general, brilliant strategist, consummate diplomat, passionate abolitionist, gifted writer, and flawed politician. A major work of history, Bolívar colorfully portrays a dramatic life even as it explains the rivalries and complications that bedeviled Bolívar’s tragic last days. It is also a stirring declaration of what it means to be a South American.
Editorials
The Washington Post -
Most North American historians, including me, have mentioned [Bolivar] only in passing, usually making "the George Washington of Latin America" reference, as though his life merits attention only when viewed through a North American prism. The hemispheric condescension inherent in that conception obviously needed correction in the form of a comprehensive biography that makes Bolivar's life accessible to a large readership in the United States. Bolivar is unquestionably that book…As befits its subject, Bolivar is magisterial in scope, written with flair and an almost cinematic sense of history happening…We might call Arana's style Bolivarian—colorful, passionate, daring, verging on novelistic.Publishers Weekly
The George Washington of South America cuts a dashing though dark-edged and ultimately tragic figure in this rousing biography. Peruvian journalist Arana (American Chica) chronicles Gen. Simón Bolívar’s struggle against the Spanish Empire in the 1810s and ’20s through several dizzying cycles of battlefield victory, triumphal procession, demoralizing reversal, and squalid exile, before he finally drove imperial forces out of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Her vivid portrait shows us a charismatic man of high ideals, fiery oratory, unflagging energy and resolve, bold strategies, and a romantic aura—“he rode, ragged and shirtless... his wild long hair riding the wind”—that women found irresistible. (His preeminent mistress was no slouch herself: she once took up a sword to protect him from assassins.) Behind the epic marches, picturesque battles, and swirling ballroom scenes, the author smartly fills in the troubled background of the revolution, which descended from Enlightenment principles into bloody civil and racial conflict and grisly massacres that Bolívar sometimes fomented; his tense rule over politically fractious republics also declined from a vision of freedom and unity to an unpopular authoritarianism. Arana’s dramatic narrative is appropriately grand and enthralling, if a tad breathless, and it makes Bolívar an apt embodiment of the ambitions and disappointments of the revolutionary age. 8 pages of color photos, 2 b&w maps. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM. (Apr. 9)Booklist (starred review)
“Arana is an indefatigable researcher, a perceptive historian, and a luminous writer, as shown in her defining, exhilarating biography of the great South American liberator Simón Bolívar. . . . Her understanding of the man behind the fame—and behind the hostility that enveloped him in his later years—brings this biography to the heights of the art and craft of life-writing.”Washington Post Book World
“Most North American historians have mentioned [Bolivar] only in passing, usually making 'the George Washington of Latin America' reference. . . . That conception obviously needed correction in the form of a comprehensive biography that makes Bolivar’s life accessible to a large readership in the United States. Bolivar is unquestionably that book. . . . Bolivar is magisterial in scope, written with flair and an almost cinematic sense of history happening. . . . A monumental achievement destined to win some major literary prizes.”The Los Angeles Times
"Wonderful. . . . In Arana's energetic and highly readable telling, Bolívar comes alive as having willed himself an epic life. . . . She brings great verve and literary flair to her biography of Bolívar."Walter Isaacson
“Finally, Bolivar gets the sweeping biography he deserves. He was the greatest leader in Latin American history, and his tale is filled with lessons about leadership and passion. This book reads like a wonderful novel but is researched like a masterwork of history.”Gordon S. Wood
“This is a magnificent story. Deeply researched and written with clarity, honesty, and verve, Marie Arana’s book tells the life of one of the greatest heroes and founders in world history. North Americans who know only of George Washington will thrill to read the epic adventures of his South American counterpart. As fantastic as Bolivar’s life appears, ‘it is not,’ as Arana says of Latin America’s bloody past in general, ‘magical realism. It is history. It is true.’”Walter A. McDougall
“With the eye and ear of a novelist, Marie Arana chants the epic of Bolivar with love, zest, and compelling authority.”Evan Thomas
“Simon Bolivar has found the perfect biographer in Marie Arana, a literary journalist, brilliant novelist of South America, and wise historian as well. Her portrait of Bolivar is human and moving; she has written a powerful and epic life and times."Booklist
“Arana is an indefatigable researcher, a perceptive historian, and a luminous writer, as shown in her defining, exhilarating biography of the great South American liberator Simón Bolívar. . . . The good of this meticulous new account of Bolívar’s exciting, to say nothing of consequential, life and times is that such a robust, dynamic, and, more importantly, easily accessible narrative goes to great lengths to rectify the North American unfamiliarity with Bolívar. . . . Her understanding of the man behind the fame—and behind the hostility that enveloped him in his later years—brings this biography to the heights of the art and craft of life-writing.”Kirkus Reviews
Inspired biography of the great Latin American revolutionary, with great depth given to his fulsome ideas. Like the recent biography by Englishman Robert Harvey, novelist and memoirist Arana's (Lima Nights, 2008, etc.) work is bold and positively starry-eyed about her subject. She plunges into the tumultuous life of the Great Liberator, from the moment he thundered into the capital of the Spanish viceroyalty, Santa Fe de Bogotá, on August 10, 1819, at age 36 and at the height of his power, sure at last that his revolution "stood to inherit all the abandoned riches of a waning empire." Arana reconstructs the wildly erratic, early character development that led to Bolívar's apotheosis, a career forged by his own will and wrought by experience, from his aristocratic roots in Caracas through wide-ranging travels to Europe and America. From his mother's thwarted efforts to secure a title of nobility for her sons, Bolívar learned early on about the racial inflexibility of the Spanish overseers, cognizant that Latin America, with its rich ethnic layers, was unlike the makeup of European and American society and therefore was incompatible with their models of government. Bolívar would effectively build on important insurrections before him: by Indian leader Túpac Amaru II in Peru in 1781; by the famously egotistical Venezuelan rebel-in-exile Francisco de Miranda, from whom Bolívar learned the fatal consequences of indecision; and by José de San Martin in Argentina and Chile. Disgusted by the corruption and venality of the Spanish crown and feeling betrayed by North America's refusal to aid the Latin American revolutionaries, Bolívar embraced revolution wholeheartedly, declaring freedom for Spanish-American slaves, proclaiming war to the death and ruling by an authoritative style that won many detractors. Arana ably captures the brash brilliance of this revered and vilified leader.Library Journal
The cliché goes that history is written by the winners; in the case of Simón Bolívar, a remarkable military leader who liberated six South American countries from Spanish rule, this is not the case. Bolívar's legacy has been tarnished by many right up to the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. Arana (former editor in chief, Washington Post Book World; Lima Nights) presents a human story of a wealthy Creole who, inspired by Enlightenment ideas, sought to bring South Americans of all colors responsible and representative government. As Arana aptly points out, his vision of equality went much further than the ideals of George Washington. Today, Bolívar is viewed either as the archetype of the Latin American strongman or an impossibly faultless crusader of equality. In her work, Arana adeptly finds the statesman behind the images. Drawing on Bolívar's voluminous correspondence and political writings, she assembles a chronological narrative that does justice to both Bolívar's august achievements and his human imperfections. This well-rounded work reveals not just an accomplished military tactician but also an able statesman. VERDICT This vivid biography flows smoothly and makes an important contribution to Bolívarian studies. It should appeal to readers both lay and academic, the more so as this is the bicentennial year of Bolívar's first independence campaign. [See Prepub Alert, 10/28/12.]—Brian Renvall, Mesalands Community Coll., Tucumcari, NMBook Details
Published
April 9, 2013
Publisher
Simon & Schuster
Pages
603
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9781439110195