Potosi

"For anyone who wants to learn about the rise and decline of Potosí as a city . . . Lane's book is the ideal place to begin."— New York Review of Books In 1545, a native Andean prospector hit pay dirt on a desolate red mountain in highland Bolivia. There followed the world’s greatest silver bonanza, making the Cerro Rico, or “Rich Hill,” and the Imperial Villa of Potosí instant legends, famous from Istanbul to Beijing. The Cerro Rico alone provided over half of the world’s silver for a century,