A popular history that tries to marry scholarly summary with dramatic narrative and does not succeed. Pulling from tweedy academic sources, Brutal Journey endeavors to cast a sixteenth-century misadventure involving Spanish conquistadors into an accessible story of struggle and survival. While ill-fated Iberian expeditions through Florida were a dime a dozen during the sixteenth century, the disastrous Narváez entrada is made historically significant by four expedition members who trekked from Tampa Bay to Mexico on foot. (The rest of the expedition was not so fortunate.) The initial report on their experiences in North America provided significant impetus for Hernando de Soto's subsequent (and just as ill-fated) expedition; a later and longer narrative by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, one of the survivors, is still studied by historians for his ethnographic observations of the American Indians of the region.

However, Cabeza de Vaca's account is not without imperfections and inconsistencies. Brutal Journey does a decent job of spackling gaps in his narrative (with the aid of accounts from all those other ill-fated Florida ventures) and condensing various historiographical arguments into easily understood points. The exact route followed by Cabeza de Vaca and his companions has been a bone of scholarly contention for well over a century, and Brutal Journey both outlines the broad points of the debate and picks the most reasonable choice. The book makes a special point to distinguish between the vastly different groups of American Indians that the survivors encountered, a diversity which Cabeza de Vaca himself does not always clearly convey. The facts seem shapely and accurate; the bibliography seems comprehensive. There is nothing in Brutal Journey that will lead the casual reader astray on the basic historical details.

But Brutal Journey flounders badly when it tries to splice novel-like narrative into its historical summary and features such clunky sentences as: "That was funny enough, but this warning that Cortés would arrive from Mexico City at any minute and kill them all on this rainy day was downright hilarious." [8] Brutal Journey wants the one-eyed Narváez to be the tragic central figure in its narrative. Given Narváez's role as expedition leader, this is not an unreasonable position, although it can be difficult to maintain when skimming the historical scholarship. Academics are chiefly fascinated by Cabeza de Vaca, who authored the primary documents and managed to be refreshingly weird when compared to the majority of Iberian explorers in the New World. Narváez is a harder figure for empathy. His exploits in Florida went badly, he died before he could record his own version of events, and he cannot refute Cabeza de Vaca's vicious criticisms. Brutal Journey wants to address the omissions (and self-absorption) in Cabeza de Vaca's account by inventing a heroic personality for the doomed Narváez, but the book's attempts to flesh out Narváez are clumsy and trite.

It was Good Friday of 1528, and Narváez was there on the beach. His beach. His king's beach. His God's beach. It was good. [78] ( )

A thoroughly easy and informing read. Schneider's style is pop history at its least intrusive: the occasional footnote or quote, but mostly a narrative, flowing story that is easy to get lost in.

I've had a recent surge of interest in colonial Meso-America and this book fulfilled my wishes: specific enough not to feel like a survey history of the entire continent, approachable enough not to feel dry or difficult. In all, it was relaxing to read (despite the intensity of some of the subject matter).

In the end, though, the book's main flaw is that its structure follows that of Cabeza de Vaca's: descriptive and full-flowered in the first geographical half of the journey, then frenetic and blurry for the last fifty pages or so, where much of the action actually occurs: the many-month trek northwest across Mexico and Texas, and the reunion with Spanish conquistadors.

An aside: A couple of times in the book, Schneider refers to situations as "grizzly." I think he means "grisly." What do you think? ( )

This is a fun book to read on a beach - preferably one on Cape Cod. A kind of throw away popular history "novel" as opposed to a well developed history. The section on whaling were particularly enjoyable. A little to much personal type stuff for a book with history in the title. ( )

Amazing story of 400 Spanish explorers who walked into the bush of southern Florida in the 1520s and disappeared - eight years later four survivors showed up on the west coast of central Mexico, dressed as natives and carrying nothing but a few hundred indians worshiping them as powerful shamans. In the intervening 8 years it was one incredible adventure after the next, mostly dire tales of starvation, violence and exotic peoples. They were the first to enter North America and cross it. An otherwise little known story today, it was a classic best-seller in the 16th century, retold here with the latest scholarly findings. There are few comparable stories in the history of exploration, North America was an entirely unknown continent. ( )