Conquest by Hugh Thomas, probably the best book on Cortes' conquest of the Mexica people (Aztecs) and my gold standard for non-fiction - it's got almost 200 pag

Conquest by Hugh Thomas, probably the best book on Cortes' conquest of the Mexica people (Aztecs) and my gold standard for non-fiction - it's got almost 200 pages of notes and sources, for example, and most of them are available via Project Gutenberg. This book really drove home the effects of European imperialism without all the "woke" rhetoric found in contemporary discourse. The Mexica performed human sacrifices at a horrifying scale but they were otherwise as close to a utopian society as I've ever read about, built on completely different cultural mores including a religion that almost deified the emperor far beyond Europe's "divine right of kings." Since their entire war machine was built around capturing prisoners for these sacrifices with obsidian weapons meant to wound rather than kill, they were completely unprepared for the armor and horses. It's hard not to see Montezuma as a tragic figure whose indecisiveness led to the conquest of all of Central America. Cortes' expedition was an unmitigated disaster from day one but once the New Spain beachhead was established, the writing was on the wall, even though some tribes like the Mayans held out for a few hundred more years. I often wonder how different the world would look today if Cortes and his conquistadors were slaughtered by the Mexica before they even reached Tlaxcala. Instead Cortes walked right in the front door and decapitated an entire civilization.