Conquistador Voices

The Spanish Conquest of the Americas as Recounted Largely by the Participants, Volume I

By: Kevin H. Siepel

Narrated by: Kevin H Siepel

Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

The Spanish Conquest: What really happened?

If you like to use your drive time for education by audiobook, consider this audiobook for widening and deepening your view of an event you studied briefly in school - the Spanish conquest of the Americas.

Conquistador Voices, which relies more heavily than most works of this kind on first-person accounts, neither glamorizes nor condemns the conquistadors. Somewhat in the manner of a modern film documentary, it treats the so-called conquest as an historical event that’s worth learning about for its own sake, with most of the moralizing left to the listener.

In two volumes, Conquistador Voices covers five high-profile personages and their respective roles in this epochal event. Vol I features the voyages of Christopher Columbus and the conquest of Mexico by Hernán Cortés, while vol II provides an in-depth look at the conquest of Peru by Francisco Pizarro, the years-long desert odyssey of Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, and the North American expedition of Hernando de Soto. Both volumes get deeply into details of Native American life in those times.

Spice up your drive time with this entertaining and educational audiobook excursion into the past.

©2015 Kevin H Siepel (P)2020 Kevin H Siepel

Fascinating, shocking, a must read!

What an eye opener!! I wanted to refresh and deepen my knowledge of that time period. in return I unveiled an action packed epic story filled with adventure, war, death, hope... the best and worst of humanity. No heroes, no villains, yet fascinating lives.
excellent book, well organized content, well read (a bit monomotone). A must read.

Viva la Cortes

Well done. Primary sources showed how the Spanish anihilated the Aztecs. Cortes had much ambition and gahones.

Fascinating Era of Mindblowing Adventures told from First Person

I loved both of the volumes of these books and wish there were more for other explorers all over the world. While the narrator/author has a somewhat monotone cadence to his voice, I found it soothing and would get sucked into the stories , which were shocking to grasp had actually occurred.
My favorite stories were the Cortez and Pizarro adventures, based on how these explorers found and somehow masterminded the downfall of two of the most sophisticated civilizations in the Americas. The Cabeza de Vaca story is also insane— comes as explorer , turned into slave in Indian controlled US, then recognized as a spiritual healer before reuniting with the Spanish and starting a new adventure in Uruguay. These topics are super exciting to me but maybe I’m just a history nerd, but regardless it’s crazy stuff and you guys need to listen to both volumes it will blow your mind. Mr. Siepel please make more of these!!

The Misleading Title is the Most Forgivable Part..

While indeed a collection of contemporary accounts from Conquistadors, Mr. Siepel it seems cannot help himself from interjecting periodically to brow beat the reader (or listener) with semi-political dogma about the "evil of the European explorers". Whatever the true intention of the author in writing such a book, I will refrain from speculating on, as the political leaning or religious beliefs of any Historical Authors should be irrelevant in regards to recounting, collecting, and compiling information from the past and presenting it in a format that provides a fuller or richer understanding of the events described. However, this book isn't that. It masquerades as History, but I would not fault anyone who accused it of being closer to flat-out propaganda. There are multiple instances in which the Author mistakenly (or perhaps intentionally) provides verifiably false narratives in order to reinforce the ideas or beliefs in which he is positing or he himself holds. Simply change the ink color to red for the passages of the book written by Mr. Siepel and you will have something akin to a bible. One in which the author deems white Europeans as a Devil figure, and imagines himself (probably also white) as the moral logos or supreme.

My opinion

Perhaps just my own personal preference, but narrator's voice is so monotonic and hard to listen to for a long time.
Storytelling is more on the informative end rather than entertaining. Although very informative indeed (hence the 2 stars).
I got this title after the superb "A land so strange" cause I wanted to learn more on the subject but there's no comparison.
My conclusion/recommendation, don't pay attention to high ratings and big titles, listen to the sample first and make sure you like the narration before anything else, as it made all the difference for me on this one.