"...Lane deserves credit not only for assembling so much old and new information into a convenient form, but also for reminding us that cities have a life of their own, regardless of their national or transnational importance. . . . As he writes in his preface, the aim of his book is to 'balance the local and the global by treating Potosi–city and mountain, mines and countryside–as an example of early modern global urbanism and extraction in action.' In this he succeeds admirably."– "New York Review of Books"