Everyone knows that in 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic, seeking a new route to the East; few note, however, that his intention was also to sail southward, to the tropics. Here Nicolás Wey Gómez rewrites the geographical history of the discovery of the Americas, casting it as part of Europe's reawakening to the natural and human resources of the South. In this provocative, illustrated survey, Wey Gómez shows that Columbus shared in a common yet an unscientific tradition that linked terrestrial latitude to the nature of places, leading him to conclude that the "uncivilized" people he encountered on his journeys were natural-born subjects or slaves.