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Imagined Empires: Incas, Aztecs, and the New World of American Literature, 1771-1876 (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture)

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This book incorporates the views of American supriority and thestripping of tradtional Native American Empires from the canon ofAmerican text. Dr. Wertheimer exposes the nationalistic views of Post-Revolutionistic American writers in their attitudes towards the Incas and Aztecs. He also gives importance to the struggle of Latin American countries independence first from Spain, and then, the United States.

Imagined Empires is an amazing book. It is intellectually challenging, well written, and impressively researched. Literature has helped shaped what it means to be an American, and Eric Wertheimer's scholarship shines a light, for the first time, on a crucial influence in the history of American letters. Our literary forebears were more than "Old World" immigrants set into the rough hewn wilderness of this continent -- they were also intellectual descendants of the great pre-Columbian empires. This book does a startling thing: It teaches us something new.