No book should take eight years to edit and publish yet this one did. There are many reasons for the delay, but the important fact is that it is now available. Two hundred and fifty copies were bound in hard covers and 1,250 in paperbacks. Fifty copies were privately numbered for the Editor who gave copy number one to his 75 year old mother. A relatively large number were made available for review. Eighteen persons contributed papers to this symposium. The meetings were held in Washington November 6, 7, and 8, 1952, in the Pan American Union and the Library of Congress. Some 265 persons attended from 160 schools, societies, organizations, agencies, and other groups.
Following a Foreword and an Introduction by the Editor, the book is divided into six sections: Character and Personality (one chapter); Bibliography (four chapters); History, Geography, and Numismatics (four chapters); Literature, Philosophy, and Linguistics (four chapters); Science, Typography, and Intellectual Cooperation (three chapters); and a miscellaneous section entitled: “Appendices, The Medina Centennial Celebration: Proceedings and Records” containing eight appendices. An index (pp. 277-295) concludes the volume. There are eight interesting and appropriate illustrations.
The papers vary considerably in length and range from scholarly to popular, with two excellent sketches of Medina by the Editor and by Guillermo Feliú Cruz. Medina was a many-sided character and was very nearly all things to all scholars. This symposium is not only a monument to the man and his works, but it comprises a series of appreciative tributes by scholars with wide interests and reputations from the Americas, the Philippines, and Europe. Medina was fully aware of his own importance while alive—certainly his death in 1930 could not further have heightened his fame. This book, more than any other, gives full credit to a leading Chilean and a citizen of the Americas, who is without doubt one of the greatest historians this continent has produced and who certainly is the greatest bibliographer of the Americas, and possibly of the world.
