Our America : a Hispanic history of the United States / Felipe Fernández-Armesto.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

FOREWORD / BY AMADEO PETITBO JUAN, DIRECTOR, FUNDACION RAFAEL DEL PINO -- Part One. ORIGINAL SINS -- The First Hispanic Colonization of What Is Now US Territory, c. 1505/1846 -- CHAPTER ONE. THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH -- The First Colonies in What Was To Be the United States, 1505/1598 -- CHAPTER TWO. THE CITIES OF CIBOLA -- The Colonial Midwest from the Mississippi to the Rockies, 1598/1798 -- CHAPTER THREE. THE PURSUIT OF KING ARTHUR -- The Shadow of "Anglo-" America, 1607/1784 -- CHAPTER FOUR. THE REALM OF QUEEN CALAFIA -- The Foundation of California and the Showdown with "Anglo-" America, c. 1766/1846 -- Part Two. THE EMPIRE OF EDEN -- The Expansion of "Anglo-" America and the Hispanic Retreat, c. 1846/1898 -- CHAPTER FIVE. THE CURSE OF ZORRO -- The Great Expropriation, 1846/1887 -- CHAPTER SIX. THE REVENGE OF MORONI -- The Triumph of "Anglo-" America, 1830/1898 -- Part Three. PARADISE REGAINED? : The Second Hispanic Colonization, c. 1898/2012 -- CHAPTER SEVEN. THE RETURN TO AZTLAN -- Americanization and Resistance in the Age of Countercolonization, c. 1898/1986 -- CHAPTER EIGHT. THE REPUBLIC OF HESPERUS -- The Remaking of the Hispanic United States, c. 1914/2012 -- CHAPTER NINE. RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT -- Why the United States "Is," and Has To Be, a Latin American Country.

Taking on the conventional Anglo-centrism of American history, this superb survey offers a different way of looking at the nation's past. A leading scholar of the Americas at the University of Notre Dame, Fernandez-Armesto brilliantly reveals the U.S.'s deep roots in Spanish and Hispanic culture and aspirations. With convincing arguments and deftly told stories, he shows how Spain and Hispanics have influenced American history from well before the British arrived. Likely to be controversial, Fernandez-Armesto's study makes a strong case for the 20th-century being America's " second Hispanic colonization" and argues that "the United States is-and has to be-a Latin American country." Along the way, readers will learn who the real Zorro may have been and how literary magical realism may have originated in the U.S. While not an entirely new way to look at the American past, no one has presented it better or with more zest. A first-person, opinionated, learned, wide-ranging, and delightfully written book, this is responsible revisionist history at its very best and deserves the widest possible attention.