Vasco Nuñez de Balboa
The Conquistador Who Crossed Panama and First Beheld the Pacific in the New WorldBy Frederick A. Ober
Length4h 58m
About this audiobook
Frederick A. Ober's *Vasco Nuñez de Balboa* presents the Spanish explorer's dramatic career, from his troubled beginnings and Atlantic crossing to his march across the Isthmus of Panama and celebrated sighting of the Pacific Ocean. Combining narrative biography with geographical and historical explanation, Ober emphasizes exploration as a contest of endurance, ambition, diplomacy, and violence. The prose is lucid, energetic, and episodic, reflecting the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century tradition of popular historical biography, while also placing Balboa within the larger Spanish expansion into the Americas. The book's heroic framing is characteristic of its period, though modern readers will also recognize the profound human and imperial consequences underlying Balboa's achievements. Ober was an American naturalist, traveler, and prolific writer on the history and geography of the Western Hemisphere. His own interest in exploration, cultivated through field experience and extensive research into colonial records and travel narratives, informed his ability to render unfamiliar landscapes vivid and historically significant. He wrote for a broad audience, especially younger readers, seeking to make the deeds of explorers intelligible without sacrificing narrative momentum. His account of Balboa therefore reflects both scholarly curiosity and the period's fascination with discovery, empire, and individual courage. This book is recommended to readers interested in the history of exploration, early Spanish America, and the development of popular historical writing. It offers an accessible introduction to Balboa while inviting critical reflection on the ideals and assumptions that shaped older accounts of conquest. Students, general readers, and those examining the literary construction of heroic explorers will find it concise, engaging, and historically revealing.
Audiobook details
GenreBiography and Memoir
Length4 hrs 58 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateDec 12, 2023
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1ILLUSTRATIONS
2SOURCES OF INFORMATION
3II LEADER OF A FORLORN HOPE 1510
4III BALBOA ASSERTS HIS SUPREMACY 1510
5IV BALBOA CAPTURES A PRINCESS 1511
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6V THE CACIQUES OF DARIEN 1511
7VI FIRST TIDINGS OF THE PACIFIC 1512
8VII A SEARCH FOR THE GOLDEN TEMPLE 1511
9VIII CONSPIRACY OF THE CACIQUES 1512
10IX HOW THE CONSPIRACY WAS DEFEATED 1512
11X DISSENSIONS IN THE COLONY 1512
12XI BALBOA STRENGTHENS HIS ARM 1512
13XII THE QUEST FOR THE AUSTRAL OCEAN 1513
14XIII ON THE SHORES OF THE PACIFIC 1513
15XIV A RIVAL IN THE FIELD 1514
16XV PEDRARIAS, THE SCOURGE OF DARIEN 1515
17XVI IN THE DOMAIN OF THE DRAGONS 1515
18XVII A COMPACT WITH THE ENEMY 1516
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