Born in Blood and Fire A Concise History of Latin America

Light, unpretentious introduction to the history of Latin America starting from the arrival of Columbus roughly up until the end of the Cold War. It’s quite superficial, as is to be expected of a single book trying to cover 500 years of a continent’s history, but it’s a great place to start if you know next to nothing about the history of Latin America (which I didn’t). The author’s political leanings sometimes came through a bit too much for my liking.