The Invention of America is probably the most prominent, at least the most visible part of O’Gorman’s work. This short book is the culmination of a long and patient work of erudition and publication of the sixteenth century Indies chronicles. Colombus, Oviedo, Gómara, Las Casas, etc: all are present in the Invention with the exception of José de Acosta, author that O'Gorman had yet introduced, annotated and published in 1941 and 1962. The eclipse of this book in the o'gormanian masterpiece is particularly difficult to explain if we realize the many parallels between the sixteenth and the twentieth century historians. The objective of this essay is first to browse through the O'Gorman reading of Acosta, then to show it is more a sign of connection than of distance, and finally, to illustrate the extent to which the “American question” has been central for the making of historiography since the beginning of modernity.