Robert H FusonJuan Ponce de Leon: And the Spanish Discovery of Puerto Rico and Florida

The book was good and informative, but the title is a little misleading, as about the first 25-30% of the book is background information to the Spanish coming to Puerto Rico and FL, and the last 1/3 of the book is after Ponce de Leon has died and deals with subsequent expeditions to the the New World. Overall the book was good, but I was expecting more information about Ponce de Leon in the book, and the book really wasn't so much about him, as much as it was the Spanish discovery of the new world.

Interesting book.

It's not for average "Joe Reader", but I enjoy reading about the places I have visited. Recommended for the serious amateur historian.

Excellent

This book is very useful for information regarding Juan Ponce de Leon, particularly because it has primary source documents contained within it that are reportedly not found anywhere else translated into English. For that reason alone, this book would be necessary for research about Spanish North America. The author also does a good job relating the specific details about the voyages of Ponce and others to Florida in the first half of the sixteenth century.I only give this book 3 stars because it is a rather disorganized read that stretches events with relatively unknown facts about them into long stories. Most of the book, excluding the primary source documents, are just saying "we don't really know what happened" with the author giving his hypotheses. This includes the locations that Ponce landed in Florida, when his expeditions were attacked both times, and what month he died.All in all, there is more that we don't know about Ponce and early Florida than what we do have records of. This is definitely the book to go for for a compilation of all known information on those subjects, though.

OK - the author uses the devise of some phony recovered papers to tell the story of Ponce and it works. Everything in the book more or less checks out as true given the knowledge that is available and is easier than wading through contempory documents. A decent read.

I had a history report on Ponce de Leon and this book covered every question and topic I had. The content is very detailed, but too complex for children under 11.