Genesis, the first volume in Eduardo Galeano's Memory of Fire trilogy, is both a meditation on the clashes between the Old World and the New and, in the author's words, an attempt to "rescue the kidnapped memory of all America." It is a fierce, impassioned, and kaleidoscopic historical experience that takes us from the creation myths of the Makiritare Indians of the Yucatan to Columbus's first, joyous moments in the New World to the English capture of New York.