On September 3, 1934 the constitutive act of the Economic Culture Fund was signed, with a specific and very limited purpose: to provide specialized books to the students of the nascent economics career at UNAM. In this book, Rafael Vargas Escalante recalls, 85 years after this discreet event, the achievements - and some notable setbacks - of a central institution in the Spanish-speaking literary, academic and artistic world: the almost 40 pieces collected here, which appeared earlier in The Gazette and other periodicals make up an arbitrary tour around some of the main authors, publishers, translators, illustrators, works, collections and subsidiaries abroad of the cultural company promoted by Daniel Cosío Villegas. "From Mexico to the whole of America" ​​is a phrase with which Arnaldo Orfila Reynal, director of the FCE for more than three decades, synthesized the Spanish-American vocation of this intellectual adventure. Funny, moving, sometimes outrageous, these little stories - "that try and succeed in rescuing from oblivion relevant episodes of cultural work and especially in the world of books," as José Woldenberg, former member of the Board of Directors of the FCE— are a recognition to all those who have contributed to build the main publishing house in Mexico.

"From Mexico to America as a whole it is a remarkable contribution so that the flame of memory does not go out and to recognize the work of those who came before us and did valuable work of which we are the beneficiaries."
José Woldenberg, UNAM