Conquering the Pacific (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, September 2021), by history professor Andrés Reséndez, recounts the 1564-65 Spanish expedition that was the first to cross the Pacific Ocean from the Americas to Asia and return. The journey began with a secret mission and included mutiny, a shipwreck and an African-Portuguese navigator whose story was almost lost to history. The story of an uncovered voyage as colorful and momentous as any on record for the Age of Discovery—and of the Black mariner whose stunning accomplishment has been until now lost to history

Andrés Reséndez grew up in Mexico City where he went into politics for a brief period and served as a consultant for historical soap operas. He has taught at Yale, the University of Helsinki, and UC Davis. Reséndez specializes on early European exploration and colonization of the Americas, the U.S-Mexico border region, and the early history of the Pacific, particularly the pioneering voyages of discovery and the biological exchanges across the largest ocean on Earth.

View the book at Harper Collins Publishers