Each volume explores the life and times of the titular "fighters." The presentation is cluttered, with blocks of text, timelines, illustrations, and other graphics in heavy use but with no unifying style. A gimmicky "Top Five Xtreme" countdown scattered throughout offers cursory bios of famous figures. Overall, the texts read as a smattering of random facts rather than a narrative. Bib., glos., ind.

The Great Warriors series continues to profile some of history's baddest bunches aled way down for a younger crowd. Each title boasts a fabulous design, heavy on oversize font and a crisp, bright array of reproduced artifacts and historical art of both amateur and sophisticated origin. A good deal of the information comes from captions positioned throughout the layout, and each title ends with the same Old World map showing where all of the series subjects focused their battles. Conquistadors is fairly evenhanded, drawing a simple sketch of Spaniards like Cortés who came after gold with rapiers and guns, destroying entire civilizations along their way. These books are taste-whetters and little more, but at that task, they succeed, and smashingly.