This author has chosen an unusual comparison of North American narrative: Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's Naufragios and William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation. Although the focus is on these two accounts, the author does an excellent job of placing both works in the context of other accounts composed at approximately the same time. For Bradford's account, she uses Mourt's Relation (1622), Edward Winslow's New England Plantation (1624) and Thomas Morton's New England Canaan (1637). For Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, she uses a now lost account by Cabeza de Vaca's companions Andrés Dorante and Alonso del Castillo, summarized by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo's Sumario de la natural historia de las Indias (1526), and a contemporary Portuguese account by the “Hidalgo de Elvas” (1557).

Both John Smith's initial glowing account of New England from 1616 and Mourt's Relation were designed to attract investors and colonists to a region that had little in the way of riches or other enticements. Both describe a bountiful nature with abundant oak pine, juniper and walnut forests, flocks of geese and ducks – a pleasing living space if otherwise lacking in attractions. While other less positive accounts circulated in seventeenth-century England they may have lacked financial backing for publication. The best-known critical account of the New England settlement in the present day, William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation, was never published until 1846. By contrast with Smith's and Mourt's paeans to a benevolent nature, Bradford describes sharp and violent winters, fierce storms, food insecurity, and barbarous natives.

Cabeza de Vaca's self-involved narrative describes interdependence created between the Spaniards trying to find their way back to Mexico and the indigenous inhabitants. The two texts differ sharply in attitudes towards natives. Bradford's overt hostility to natives contrasts with Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's ambivalence – at once afraid and admiring. Nonetheless, the Naufragios remains full of deliberate gaps and omissions, the reasons for which remain unclear. By contrast, his companions' version, summarized by Fernández de Ovideo, provides greater information on the food insecurity of both Indians and Spaniards alike: the seasonable availability of oysters, fish, deer, blackberries, and corn. The publication of Cabeza de Vaca's Naufragios (1542 and 1559), however, owes a great deal to Bartolomé de Las Casas's appropriation of this narrative of largely peaceful encounters with native people throughout the southeastern United States and Mexico.

In contrasting the two, Gómez-Calisteo notes that, although Cabeza de Vaca's account was published, it was cast as a cautionary tale. Bradford's report was similarly cautionary, but not printed for centuries. Bradford's self-effacement and dissociation (describing himself in the third person) have made him more popular with contemporary audiences than Cabeza de Vaca's coy evasions and self-promotion.

The most controversial part of the book (chapter 2) deals with the value attached to eyewitness testimony, which the author claims occupied an inferior position in the world of seventeenth-century letters. The author argues that the historian, with his stylistic superiority and use of classical and religious allusions, created works more valued by his contemporaries than the contemporary accounts. While today we attach greater value to participant reports, she quotes William Wood's 1634 observation that eyewitnesses may “lie by authority” without others to contradict them (23). She follows this statement with Jerónimo de San José's 1651 observation that “it is more seemly that the historian not be present … because … his mind might be free and dispassionate to judge and learn the truth by examining the relations of other people” (25, original emphasis). There already exists a historical debate on eyewitness testimonies about the Americas, and it will be interesting to see how this argument will be received.