"He came dancing across the water with his galleons and guns."

Thus goes a song by Neil Young that deals with "Cortez the Killer."

Though Matthew Restall does not quote Young in his latest book Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, he does deal with many misnomers concerning Cortez, Columbus and other conquistadors.

At 7 tonight at Barnes & Noble, 365 Benner Pike, Restall will give a free talk about his internationally published book.

Very few people are more qualified to write about this controversial subject. Restall is associate professor of Latin American history, anthropology, women's studies and director of Latin American studies at Penn State. He has taught Nahuatl, the native language of the Aztec Empire that is still spoken today.

Jake Frederick, a graduate student who took a class with Restall, said, "He knows his stuff inside out and backwards. As Matthew's student, you learn dead people speak for themselves."

However, Restall is careful to refrain from academia. A colleague of his, Philip Jenkins, professor of history and religious studies said "He plays a dirty trick on you. It's an academic book, but it also has a lot of stories."

Frederick, along with nine other graduate students, took a graduate level course that Restall taught three years ago. In this seminar, they tackled these misconstrued history lessons. When Restall published his work, these students were not forgotten. Frederick said, "Matthew made sure to cite each and every one of our papers in his book."

Latin American culture and history have always fascinated Restall. As a child he was raised in South America for a few years.

"I went to Mexico as an undergraduate student," he said. "And I got hooked."

Since then, he has been back to South America 12 times.

Restall's goal for this book was to dismantle some popularly excepted misconceptions regarding early exploration of the Americas. In Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest, he set out to set the record straight. One of the untruths he set out to dispel was the widespread belief that the explorers were all white conquistadors, when in fact some were African-Americans or women. Another fallacy concerns the military superiority of Spanish conquistadors, when in reality divisions between the South American tribes really enabled this easy conquest.