M. Carmen Gómez-Galisteo, Early Visions and Representations of America: Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's Naufragios and William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation

This absorbing book brings together two works written by two seemingly dissimilar figures who share the experience of finding themselves in “an unknown land whose reality they could hardly grasp” (x) and who were pioneers in their experiences of America. Cabeza de Vaca, a “failed conquistador looking for lands to annex to the emergent Spanish empire” and Bradford, an “Englishman whose religious beliefs made his community the object of … intense persecution,” both left written testomies of Ame..