A Spaniard originally from Italy, the polymath Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci (1702 1753), known as Boturini, traveled to New Spain in 1736. Becoming fascinated by the Mesoamerican cultures of the New World, he collected and copied native writings and learned Nahuatl, the language in which most of these documents were written. Boturini s incomparable collection confiscated, neglected, and dispersed after the Spanish crown condemned his intellectual pursuits became the basis of his "Idea of a New General History of North America." The volume, completed in 1746 and written almost entirely from...