Gold in the Americas

Step into the passionate world of gold in the Americas, from the moment Christopher Columbus and the Spanish conquistadors fell under its spell and ventured forth to discover, colonize, and exploit the New World and its resources, right up to the present day and recent explorations for gold deposits in northern Quebec.

Gold's natural properties are every bit as surprising as the powers attributed to the mineral, which is why gold could engender the brutal but extraordinarily productive encounter of the peoples who built the Americas of today. The Indians, Africans, Europeans, and Métis all contributed - through the alchemy of time and passion - to forging the face of the nations and the landscapes of the vast territory of the Americas. From pre-Hispanic treasures to technological marvels of the twenty-first century, the ways in which gold has been used are as limitless as the human imagination. Let yourself succumb to gold fever and discover the Americas as you have never before seen them.

A preface by the writer Dany Laferrière. Texts by the anthropologists Jacques-M. Chevalier, Paul-Christiaan Klieger, Zélie Larose-Chevalier, José Lopez-Arellano and Michael Taussig; by the archaeologists Claude Chapdelaine, Yves Chrétien, Hélène Côté, Richard Fiset, Michael Gates, Roberto Lleras, Louise-Iseult Paradis, Gilles Samson and Sanitago Uceda-Castillo; by the historians Hélène Daneau, Miguel Luque Talaván and Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert; by the arts historians Letizia Arbeteta-Mira, Clara-Isabel Botero, Paz Cabello-Carro, Paloma Carcedo de Mufarech and Winifred Glover; by the gold market analyst Jean-Bernard Guyon; and by the geologists Benoît Dubé, Jayanta Guha, Michel Guiraud and Jean-Marc Lulin.