In the history of the Spanish conquest of America, there is no episode more adventurous, exciting, dramatic than the story of the discovery and conquest of Mexico, so interest in the main character of this plot, Hernan Cortes, will never run out. The peculiarity of this book, created in the biographical genre, is that along with Cortes, it presents biographical portraits of five of his associates, four of whom organized their own research and conquest expeditions and firmly inscribed their names in the history of the conquest. The amazing fates of the six heroes of this book are bizarrely intertwined, and the background of these biographies is the fascinating story of the Spanish conquest of Central and North America. The author tried to abandon biased interpretations, create an objective and multidimensional image of the Spanish conquistador, show the originality of the spiritual appearance of the movers and brightest representatives of the era of great geographical discoveries. The fascinating and informative book by A. Kofman is written in a living language, richly illustrated with old engravings and drawings from Indian manuscripts and is intended for a wide range of readers, including high school students.