Stanley J. Stein

Until his retirement, he taught at Princeton University, holding the Walter Samuel Carpenter III Professor of Spanish Civilization and Culture.

In an interview published in 2010, Vincent Peloso says of this work, "It is fair to say that no one who studied Latin American history over the last 35 years would have failed to engage the slim, elegantly written synthesis.

Published almost simultaneously with Vassouras was his work on the cotton industry in Brazil, which he researched in tandem with the project on coffee production.

Colonial Heritage began as a series of lectures to high school teachers established by Samuel Bailey at Rutgers University, but it has had a wide readership after its modest beginnings, translated in Spanish and other languages.

The authors also reveal the hollowness and rigidity of that power and show why Spain was unable, in the end, either to modernize or to benefit from its control of the main source of the world's bullion.