Although any date that aims to delineate two epochs remains arbitrary, none is better suited to mark the beginning of the modern age than the year 1492, the year Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean. We are all indirect descendants of Columbus; with him, our genealogy begins—if the word "beginning" even makes sense. Since 1492, we have been, as Las Casas expressed it, "in this so new and incomparable time" (Historia de las Indias, I, 88). Since that date, the world has become closed (although the universe remains infinite); "the world is small," as Columbus himself emphatically states ("Carta rarísima," July 7, 1503); people have now discovered the wholeness of which they are a part, whereas until then they were a part without a whole. This book is intended to be an attempt to achieve some unity through reading.