Customer Reviews

Juan Ponce de Leon: And the Spanish Discovery of Puerto Rico and Florida

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I had a history report on Ponce de Leon and this book covered every question and topic I had. The content is very detailed, but too complex for children under 11.

This book is very useful for information regarding Juan Ponce de Leon, particularly because it has primary source documents contained within it that are reportedly not found anywhere else translated into English. For that reason alone, this book would be necessary for research about Spanish North America. The author also does a good job relating the specific details about the voyages of Ponce and others to Florida in the first half of the sixteenth century.

I only give this book 3 stars because it is a rather disorganized read that stretches events with relatively unknown facts about them into long stories. Most of the book, excluding the primary source documents, are just saying "we don't really know what happened" with the author giving his hypotheses. This includes the locations that Ponce landed in Florida, when his expeditions were attacked both times, and what month he died.

All in all, there is more that we don't know about Ponce and early Florida than what we do have records of. This is definitely the book to go for for a compilation of all known information on those subjects, though.