Meteor: How an adventure in New York changed the extraordinary life of Benjamin Vicuna Mackenna (Chilean History for travellers, by David Woods)

At the end of 1865, Chile and Spain were at war. The Spanish fleet had blockaded Chilean ports and its commander threatened to bombard the port of Valparaíso. Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna was sent to the United States to win friends for Chile and enemies for Spain. He was also to discreetly obtain ships and weapons to repel the Spanish. One such vessel was Meteor . At the time it was the fastest ship afloat, built during the American Civil War by wealthy businessmen to combat the most destructive warship in the Confederate navy, CSS Alabama .

A brilliant orator, Vicuña Mackenna's speeches to the New York elite charmed and convinced politicians, businessmen and journalists to lend their support to Chile. But his efforts – aided by underworld villains - to buy arms and make contracts to attack a US ally infuriated Washington, especially Secretary of State, William Seward. He was arrested and faced criminal charges in the renowned United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

This is the first full account of Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna's adventures in the United States. The author sets them in the broader context of the exceptional life of the young revolutionary, a fan of European radical reform movements, who became a transformative mayor of Santiago, a reformist senator, Chile's most prolific historian and, almost, the nation's president. It was a short but extraordinary life. That of a meteor.