CORONADO, KNIGHT OF PUEBLOS AND PLAINS (491 pp.)Herbert E. BolfonWhlttlesey House ($6).
One summer day in 1539 a young friar named Marcos eased himself into a barber's chair in Mexico City, unburdened himself of the biggest piece of news his barber had heard all summer. As almost everybody in Mexico City knew, Fray Marcos de Niza had just returned from a four-month trip into the unexplored country to the north, in search of the legendary "Seven Cities of Antilia." What he said while his whiskers were coming off took his story dramatically out of the reach of expedition yarns. North of the...