a detailed and anecdote-rich summary of how far back the Hispanic presence goes in what is now the US ? TLS

Gibson's sprawling work makes a major contribution by reminding us of the falseness of Donald Trump's xenophobic narrative. Her rich account leaves no doubt that America is a vastly more interesting place because of the millions of Hispanic immigrants who have been arriving on our shores for more than 600 years. ? Guardian

Gibson's book is a scholarly, compelling case for reassessing the Hispanic role in US history... El Norte is a worthy history of an overlooked population. ? History Today

El Norte is the book that Americans, Anglo and Hispanic, should read as an education on their own American place or role . . . This is a serious book of history but also an engaging project of reading the future in the past. ? New York Times Book Review

[Gibson] writes engagingly of moments of violence and injustice, deprivation and discrimination, music and muses: Her paragraphs on the early-20th-century Texas society women who bickered over how to restore the Alamo, for instance, would do justice to the pen of an Edith Wharton. ? Wall Street Journal

In this enlightening and exhaustively researched work, Carrie Gibson has accomplished the monumental task of recovering an extraordinary and consequential Hispanic past traditionally written out of American history. Her narrative is far reaching, vividly detailed, and a gift to assessing the American experience and evolving identity. -- Jack E. Davis, author of THE GULF, winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for History

Carrie Gibson has written an epic history which will significantly change the way we look at American history...Her research is meticulous in detail and her writing propels the reader through 500 years to today. So thorough is her work that I will be keeping El Norte on my bookshelf -- but pulling it down often to leaf through its pages. -- Richard Parker, author of LONE STAR NATION

A sweeping story of our Hispanic roots that links the dreamers of the Conquest with the Dreamers of the present, ranging across a continent's history from first contacts in Florida to intersecting empires on Vancouver Island. In connecting places across the United States with their Hispanic pasts, Carrie Gibson connects our America with what one Cuban called Nuestra América, blurring borders at a time when others are building them up. -- Paul Gillingham, author of CUAUHTEMOC?S BONES
Carrie Gibson is the author of the acclaimed Empire's Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean From Columbus to the Present Day. She received a PhD from Cambridge University, focusing on the Spanish Caribbean in the era of the Haitian Revolution, and has worked as a journalist for the Guardian and contributed to other publications, as well as the BBC. She lives in London.