The True Story and Description of a Country of Naked, Ferocious and Anthopophage Savages Situated in the New World America was one of the most published books about the New World during the XVI Century. The story of young Hans Staden's adventure, his captivity among the tupinamba tribe in ancient Brazil, contains all the elements of the then emerging travel literature that nurtured the old world's dreams about the exotic. And better yet, it benefits from its own authenticity by stemming from the author's direct observation. Staden writes about his adventure, but while doing so he also offers first hand ethnographical data of great value. The most attractive, while at the same time most repulsive, for the European readers is, undoubtedly, the description of the blood soaked anthropophagic rituals, that exerted a visible fascination on the civilized audience. The Brazilian Spectacle, depicted in the wood etchings of the 1547 edition, was transformed into full color pictures by the engraver editor Theodore de Bry. The evoking of such a different cultural universe makes one ponder about the paradox of human nature: sometimes the evil savages appear as having more human qualities that the civilized westerners. In this full color edition prof. Jean-Paul Duviols compares the Staden's first edition wood etchings with the later stylized full color depictions by De Bry, a comparison that highlights the interpretation the western world gave to the base information conveyed by Staden.

This dictionary aims to include all the cultural data pertaining to the Argentine Republic, starting at the most remote times up to the present. With this work the author, French historian, ethnologist and Sorbonne University researcher Jean-Paul Duviols, proposes an alfabetically ordered list of names that make the foundations of the Argentine history, ethnology, and literature -including a necessarily brief analysis of the main works- and also spans the plastic arts, music, and movies. This work gathers, for the first time and in a synthetic and easy reading way, a corpus of data that constitutes the cultural personality of a complex society and a not easy to understand country such as Argentina.

In the second part of his work Great Voyages (1591) the engraver, printer and publisher Theodor de Bry (1528-1598) evokes the adventures of a French Calvinist group that commanded by captain Jean Ribault and the explorer Rene Laudonniere attempted, between the years of 1562 and 1565, to settle in the Florida peninsula. The encounters with the Timucua indians, the intervention of the Spanish troops led by the first Spanish governor of Florida, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, and the subsequent slaughter of almost all the French settlers, are the predominant elements of an episode of the European Wars of Religion exported to the New World. Being Huguenot Captain Jean Ribault on his return to Europe was forced to seek shelter in England, where was granted an audience before Queen Elizabeth to ask for her support for a plan to settle colonies in America. However, accused of spying on behalf of the French, he was incarcerated in the Tower of London instead. Probably it was during his imprisonment that he wrote an account of the voyage, which survives only in English translation. Almost twenty years later Walter Raleigh finally obtained the Queen's support and founded the first English colony in the New World, which he baptized Virginia. The present edition comprises the magnificent water colored engravings, the originals having being acquired by the engraver and publisher Theodor de Bry in London from the widow of painter Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, one of the few survivors of the Slaughter of Florida and among whose customers was Walter Raleigh himself. Le Moyne's illustrations constitute an exceptional ethnographic documentation about indigenous groups nowadays extinct.

There is very scarce information on the author of this peculiar book, that many scholars consider initiated the British appetite for the Spanish colonies in South America. Accarette -as he calls himself- or Accarette du Biscay -as appears in the English translation of his story- seems to have been a French-Basque adventurer who traveled twice to South America between 1657 and 1660 under the false identity of a Spanish subject, as the Spanish regime would not allow non-subjects to disembark in its colonies. His most evident purpose -a fact Accarette does not hide- was the lucrative smuggling business, and his urge to make another trip prompted him to write a report to no one else but the French king Louis XIV. The variety and detail of this adventurous businessman -mixture of spy and filibuster- observations on everyday colonial life and customs in Buenos Aires, Cordoba, Salta, Jujuy, -the mules road-, the -hide civilization- and the Potosi mines, is a highly valuable testimony for the River Plate, Tucuman and Potosi XVII Century history study, more so considering the scarcity of documentation on those places at that time. Frustrated corsair, or ill-fated governor of hipothetical French possessions on the River Plate, the -political circumstaces- hampered Accarette's chances to enter the official story. In any case, if the report was discarded by the French, it did not face the same fate in England, where a translation was first published in 1698, and again in 1716. The Accarette report -so full of strategic and tactical details- makes the reader wonder what would have happened if Louis XIV had not been so tied up with the episodes in the Low Countries that led to the Franco-Dutch War (1672-1678), and up to which point the British Admiralty had not evoked these writings when planning the invasion to Buenos Aires almost 140 years later. This edition, by Sorbonne professor and researcher Jean-Paul Duviols, is a highly accurate translation into Spanish from the original French version, unlike all previous ones that were based on either the first or second English edition.

"Three years of captivity among the Patagones" is an exceptional ethnological document, but to its documentary value it adds the attraction and intensity of an adventures novel. It narrates the extraordinary experience of Auguste Guinnard, a young French immigrant who, around 1850, gets lost in the Pampas and is captured by native tribes who considered every foreigner a foe. Bound to a cruel slavery among the last nomads of Patagonia, Guinnard, was forced to sleep in the ground, and survive naked feeding from raw meat and fresh blood. In spite of being despised, and often chastised even by children, he became a privileged witness to alternate scenes of peace and violence. In his narration he details both the domestic habits of the various tribes with whom he lived, as well as the return of the "malones" and the horrid fate reserved to captives, male and female. Permanently risking death, most of the time hopeless, Guinnard finally managed to flee in a horrendous night and day galloping horse ride. This extraordinary adventure narration was first published in France with great success in the Le Tour du monde magazine. Even French writer Jules Verne, one of its passionate readers, was inspired by Guinnard to set the beginning of "The children of Captain Grant" in Patagonia. Guinnard's book is one of the most important and original documents facilitating a better understanding of a key moment in the Argentine past, when two antagonistic life conceptions, one European, sedentary and in need of peace conditions to flourish, and the other, indigenous and nomadic, and dependent of bellicose habits in order to keep control of its vast territories, attempted an almost impossible coexistence This new Spanish edition, translated from the French original, annotated and with a foreword by Sorbonne researcher prof. Jean-Paul Duviols, constitutes a valuable addition to the existing bibliography, making a great reading for any course dealing with the "indian issue" of the South American Pampas.

The painful and violent testimony of cruelties incurred by the Spanish conquistadors in the new world, concisely depicted by Bartolom de Las Casas in his "Brevsima relacin de la destruycin de las Indias," is both a terrible accusation and a warning addressed at Prince Phillip of Spain. By accumulating descriptions of atrocities, slaughters and tortures, while emphasizing the deep contrast between the goodness of the natives and the evil spirit of the conquistadors, the dominic priest prophesizes apocalyptic consequences to fall upon Spain as results of the horrors perpetrated by the colonizers, driven by greed and ambition instead of the desire to evangelize and protect the "new souls." With his revolutionary writing Las Casas intended to share his indignation facing such unjust and unmerciful behaviours, which he attributed to the "encomiendas" colonial regime, while advocating for a human and pacific evangelization. As he had recently done during the famous Valladolid Controversy, he tried to awaken consciences, reaffirming his humanism and universalism through his relentless mission as defender of the oppressed people. Spain's political and religious foes took advantage of this libel, integrating it into what would be known as the Spanish Conquest "black legend," so it's author became the victim of criticism and resent by Spaniards, who considered that he had contributed to the discredit of his own fatherland. This present edition includes all the engravings -annotated- of the famous Theodore de Bry (a protestant) edition. Jean-Paul DUVIOLS is academic emeritus of the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne. A specialist in the colonial period, travel literature and iconographic analysis, he has written numerous works on the European vision about America, from Christopher Columbus to Alexander von Humboldt.