Still shopping? For the next week, each afternoon, I'll be recommending a new book in the TPM Featured Book section -- each one a richly-textured work of popular history writing, each one a great find.

This afternoon, Hugh Thomas' Conquest, the history in English of Cortes' conquest of Mexico. A brilliant rendering of the rapid, violent and in many respects catastrophic clash of two civilizations amidst war, mutual discovery and epidemic disease.

For those who read our earlier recommendation, Bernal Diaz's The Conquest of New Spain, a first-hand account of the events in question, Conquest is an almost essential companion.