Bartolomé de Las Casas was a prolific writer. He wrote many petitions, treatises, and books on the subject of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. His most famous works included the Historia apologética (Apologetic History) and the Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies). The former was written as an introduction to a proposed book called Historia de las Indias, and the latter was published as a stand-alone summary of that book. The book itself was not published in Las Casas’s lifetime.