AGUIRRE: The Re-Creation of a Sixteenth Century...

AGUIRRE: The Re-Creation of a Sixteenth Century Journey Across South America by Stephen Minta (Henry Holt: $11.95; 244 pp.). In 1560, Lope de Aguirre, an undistinguished Basque adventurer, joined a Peruvian expedition to find the fabulous land of El Dorado. The megalomaniacal Aguirre seized control of the expedition, which degenerated into a series of bloody raids on Indian and Spanish settlements. So terrible were his depredations that his name remains synonymous with evil four centuries later. Drawing on contemporary chronicles, maps and his own travels, Stephen Minta follows the ill-fated expedition from Cuzco across the Andes, down the Amazon and back to Caracas and Bogota. His vivid narrative blends careful research with a novelist’s flair for characterization.