On behalf of abaddon:
"Does anyone know of a book/s which blend fact and fiction of the Colonial era (Start of)
I'm thinking diarys of the explorers as they sailed out..
Also, factual books about that era, how nations went about it, global politics etc.. guess I want a history book about that era..I suppose focus on Europe, but a book that took in all the world would be great!
My Dad want's to buy me such books, if they exist. Can anyone recommend them to me?"
Cabeza da Vaca (yes, it means head of the cow) wrote a journal of his experiences wandering the American southwest after the shipwreck of Panfilo Narvaez's expedition in the Gulf of Mexico. It's been published under at least a couple of names in English. The edition I have is called "Castaways," but I haven't read it yet...
For things I have read:
Samuel Eliot Morison - Several books, including a biography of Columbus, as well as The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages and The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages. Morison sees these men as heroes, not villains as later historians frequently do. In any event, they are immensely readable get grounded in scholarship. They don't sail into the flights of fancy and speculation that plagues so much popular history (cough, Gavin Menzies, cough).
J.H. Elliott - Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 - is a comparative history of the two largest American empires. It is definitely not popular history, and may be slow going. I intend to read his Imperial Spain, but haven't gotten around to it. While mentioning Elliott, let me express my dislike for the works of Henry Kamen. There, I said it.
Charles Hudson's Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun is a step-by-step reconstruction, using the accounts of the survivors and modern archaeology and anthropology to reconstruct Hernan De Soto's ill-fated expedition and the world of the Indians through which he traveled. Fascinating, but sometimes slow going - or was that because I read it while I had the flu?
Laurence Bergreen: Over the Edge of the World - A popular history of Magellan's voyage of circumnavigation. Even my wife, who doesn't like history, liked this one.
Peter Russell: Prince Henry 'the Navigator' - A scholarly biography of Infante Henry of Portugal and the expeditions of exploration he sponsored. Interesting on the mindset and worldview of that time and place as well as the deeds and doers, and on a subject that doesn't receive a great deal of coverage in English.
For Europe more generally during the time period, I am drawing something of a blank. For the 16th and 17th centuries, the major themes are the Reformation and the Wars of Religion/state formation, the Military Revolution (was there/wasn't there - for this start with Geoffrey Parker), and the birth of modernity (arguably - there's always an argument).