Natural and Moral History of the Indies (Chronicles of the New World Encounter) - Tapa dura

"Jose de Acosta's Natural and Moral History of the Indies is the work of one of the sixteenth century's keenest minds. Based on more than seventeen years of personal experience in Peru and Mexico as well as correspondence with fellow Jesuits around the world, Acosta creates a comparative understanding of the New World. This modern translation loses none of the freshness of Acosta's prose and thankfully makes available to readers one of the most widely read and most influential books ever written on the Americas."-Thomas Cummins, University of Chicago "A superb translation of Jose de Acosta's Natural History into contemporary English that has been long overdue, with a first-rate introduction by one of America's outstanding Hispanists. The volume should prove useful to those interested in the natural history of the New World, the history of the Jesuits, and an understanding of Catholic conversion efforts in the sixteenth century."-Patricia Seed, Rice University

The Natural and Moral History of the Indies, the classic work of New World history originally published by Jose de Acosta in 1590, is now available in the first new English translation to appear in several hundred years. A Spanish Jesuit, Acosta produced this account by drawing on his own observations as a missionary in Peru and Mexico, as well as from the writings of other missionaries, naturalists, and soldiers who explored the region during the sixteenth century. One of the first comprehensive investigations of the New World, Acosta's study is strikingly broad in scope. He describes the region's natural resources, flora and fauna, and terrain. He also writes in detail about the Amerindians and their religious and political practices. A significant contribution to Renaissance Europe's thinking about the New World, Acosta's Natural and Moral History of the Indies reveals an effort to incorporate new information into a Christian, Renaissance worldview. He attempted to confirm for his European readers that a "new" continent did indeed exist and that human beings could and did live in equatorial climates. A keen observer and prescient thinker, Acosta hypothesized that Latin America's indigenous peoples migrated to the region from Asia, an idea put forth more than a century before Europeans learned of the Bering Strait. Acosta's work established a hierarchical classification of Amerindian peoples and thus contributed to what today is understood as the colonial difference in Renaissance European thinking.