Francisco Pizarro: Destroyer of the Inca Empire (A Wicked History)

My 5th grade son has really enjoyed this series. He's read all the books and recommends them for those who enjoy history and biographies.

A good book, but there are more books that you can read that have more information than this one, but it is good for beginners.

"Francisco Pizarro: Destroyer of the Inca Empire (Wicked History)" is nothing more than Black Legend calumnies nicely packaged for children. I am shocked and disappointed that Scholastic would publish such a twisted and biased interpretation of the Spanish conquest of the New World (especially for young minds). This is nothing more than brainwashing and perpetuating the Black Legend in our country by indoctrinating the young. Why are we consistently inculcated with accepting the English colonial past as "glorious" and "virtuous", but the Spanish colonial past is presented as "evil" and "brutal"? What sheer hypocrisy! Why is 15th Century Spain always judged under contemporary morality standards? Shouldn't England, Holland, and France be judged under the same standards? The Spaniards were the first Europeans to bring Christianity and Western civilization to the Americas (it wasn't all about the gold as the Hispanophobes claim). Spain should be credited for this great accomplishment, not discredited with a vicious smear campaign. It's a fact the English nearly exterminated the Native Americans of the United States and Canada (then the few that remained were discarded on barren "reservation" land); moreover, the English and Dutch were highly racist and did not allow the mixing of races. If the Spaniards wiped out every single native group in Mexico, Central, and South America as so many ill-educated pundits in the United States claim; then why is there such a vast majority of indigenous and Mestizo (people of mixed European and Native American heritage) population in Spanish speaking countries compared to the United States and Canada? What ever happened with objective unbiased history based on historical facts? For adults, I suggest reading Philip Wayne Powell's "Tree of Hate". Tree of Hate: Propaganda and Prejudices Affecting United States Relations with the Hispanic World

I pre-read this before giving it to my kids. Although the cover tag word is "Brutal," this book glosses over most of the atrocities on both side -- Spanish and Inca. The clash of cultures was inevitable, but it was NOT inevitable that Pizarro would capture Atahualpa and crush his army without losing a single man of his expeditionary troop. Illustrated with photographs and etchings that show European portrayals of Incas (they don't look much like Incas), this book gets the point across that the Conquistadores were violent and determined men who frequently turned on one another. There's no reason a teen could not read this book. Good glossary and timeline at the back. Although the covers of this series are eye-catching, the biographies are actually fairly tame and suitable for older children.