A great story, far better than the movie later made from it called The Day the Earth Stood Still, which entirely and inexplicably changed the entire thrust and left off the kick in the tail that you *never* see coming.

This is absolutely one of the best history books I've ever read and it's all the more remarkable in that this great scholar, William Hickling Prescott, was legally blind and never saw the country about which he wrote so vividly. Cortez and the people of the nations of Mexico come alive as they never have in any other history of the conquest I've read. Marvelous book and highly recommended.