Bolivar: American Liberator
*Starred Review* Arana is an indefatigable researcher, a perceptive historian, and a luminous writer, as shown in her defining, exhilarating biography of the great South American liberator Simón Bolívar. A household name in the southern half of the Americas, Bolívar nevertheless is generally unknown to North Americans, beyond the simple, “Oh, yeah, I’ve heard the name.” The good of this meticulous new account of Bolívar’s exciting, to say nothing of consequential, life and times is that such a robust, dynamic, and, more importantly, easily accessible narrative goes to great lengths to rectify the North American unfamiliarity with Bolívar. The liberation of the South American colonies from the rule of the mother country was an even more complex, fits-and-starts program than the severing of ties between Great Britain and its Atlantic-seaboard colonies, but Arana follows the war in all its steps forward and back, at the end of which “one man would be credited for single-handedly conceiving, organizing, and leading the liberation of six nations.” Her understanding of the man behind the fame—and behind the hostility that enveloped him in his later years—brings this biography to the heights of the art and craft of life-writing. For more about the preparation of this book, see the adjacent Story behind the Story. --Brad Hooper