One day I woke up and decided I needed to know more about Iberia and its people. Trotted off to the used bookstore (a vanishing species) across from the office and right there sitting on the shelf waiting for me to arrive was this volume. Some things are just meant to be.

If you can only read one book about Spain and Portugal, this be the one. A full history is provided on wars, culture, peoples, literature, and the fantastic arts. There is something about the Peninsula that draws...perhaps it is the age of exploration, when these two countries dominated the world. Perhaps it is the culture, where the national passion for bullfights co-exists with food that elevates companionship to paradise. Perhaps it is the art of Goya, El Greco, Velazquez, Picasso, Dali. The grinding poverty that led to Spain's Franco and then to a revival that blazed forth at the Barcelona Olympics. Perhaps it is the Lisbon quake and catastrophe that saw a little nation rebuild itself anew. The Inquisition of the Church, the solidarity of football (soccer). Stunning.

Happy the country that has no history.

This is the type of book that makes you want to walk up to an air terminal and hop the next flight to the Lands of Magellan.

Book Season = Year Round (see the world before it's gone) ( )