Like everybody else, I discovered Columbus as a child; I fully accepted the heroic figure that was presented to me in the 1970s. But by the time I received a PhD in Latin American History—in the very same year as the Quincentennial of Columbus’s First Voyage—I had learned how much more complicated was his life and the evolution of his posthumous reputation. For decades, as I wrote books and taught college classes on various topics adjacent to that of Columbus, I sought to make sense of the complicated cluster of stories that comprise what I call “Columbiana.” I am still enjoying that journey!
I think Felipe Fernández-Armesto is one of the most original and brilliant historians writing in English today, and I love how his erudite, yet witty and engaging writing style is on full display here. He has written several Columbus books, but this remains the most readable.
And—as a historian of Columbus myself—I am impressed by and grateful for Fernández-Armesto’s unwavering commitment to evidence and its rational appraisal. He is not trying to sell some treasured belief or solve some imagined mystery but simply telling a story as objectively but engagingly as possible.
At times, there is a hint of eccentricity to how he writes, but that only adds to the unique pleasure of this book.
This introductory study assesses Columbus' life and achievements in the context of the great era of European overseas exploration. A Genoese cartographer, Columbus was convinced that the existence of a Western route to Asia would prove that the world was round. The book traces his attempts to persuade Ferdinand and Isabella to fund his expedition, the events of his momentous 1492 voyage and the reaction to his discovery of the New World. It also considers his disappointing subsequent career as explorer and colonial administrator, his religious obsessions and his death as a forgotten pauper.
If I want to read a more recent narrative of the Four Voyages, without caring if its details are well-evidenced or drawn from Columbiana mythology, I’ll turn to a lively book like Lawrence Bergreen’s Columbus.
But for one that finds a middle ground between Bergreen and Fernández-Armesto, telling a good tale while also paying close attention to historical evidence, I turn to this book by the Phillipses.
I especially value and enjoy how the authors emphasize and explain Columbus’s contexts, bringing us along with Columbus into the worlds of Genoa, Portugal, Spain, and then the Caribbean. I also appreciate how hard the Phillipses try to avoid overtly condemning or defending Columbus in a general way—not an easy path to stay on!
When Columbus was born in the mid-fifteenth century, Europe was largely isolated from the rest of the Old World - Africa and Asia - and ignorant of the existence of the world of the Western Hemisphere. The voyages of Christopher Columbus opened a period of European exploration and empire building that breached the boundaries of those isolated worlds and changed the course of human history. This book describes the life and times of Christopher Columbus on the 500th aniversary of his first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492. Since ancient times, Europeans had dreamed of discovering new routes to…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Among the great many books that simply narrate the Columbus story, this one stands out for its engaging writing style and—above all—for its interweaving of the Columbus story into the parallel (and, Boyle argues, closely overlapping) stories of Cabot and Vespucci. I found it a fun and fascinating reading.
That said, I do think Boyle deploys his imagination a little too freely at times. Some of the old myths and misconceptions about Columbus are nestled in here as facts—which is very much part of the Columbus tradition—and Boyle even adds some new ones. And yet that use of speculation and imagination is central to what makes the book so enjoyable.
The untold story of the rivalries and alliances between Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, and John Cabot during the Age of Exploration.
When Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, the long-established trade routes to the East became treacherous and expensive, forcing merchants of all sorts to find new ways of obtaining and trading their goods. Enterprising young men took to the sea in search of new lands, new routes, new markets, and of course the possibility of glory and vast fortunes. Offering an original vision of the race to discover America, David Boyle reveals…
Wilson-Lee’s brilliant book is not strictly about Columbus, but about his youngest son Hernando Colón and the extraordinary library that he created in Seville.
However, it sheds much light on Columbus and his world. And (to paraphrase what I wrote when I listed this as one of my three “Favorite reads in 2023”), the book is not only a contribution to Columbus studies, but also an absolute pleasure to read.
It is erudite and scholarly, and Wilson-Lee shows a keen eye for fascinating digressions. Yet he also writes with wit and elegance, maintaining subtle narrative tension and effortlessly bringing the reader deep into the eccentric world of Hernando and his many books.
This impeccably researched and “adventure-packed” (The Washington Post) account of the obsessive quest by Christopher Columbus’s son to create the greatest library in the world is “the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters” (NPR) and offers a vivid picture of Europe on the verge of becoming modern.
At the peak of the Age of Exploration, Hernando Colón sailed with his father Christopher Columbus on his final voyage to the New World, a journey that ended in disaster, bloody mutiny, and shipwreck. After Columbus’s death in 1506, eighteen-year-old Hernando sought to continue—and surpass—his father’s campaign to explore the boundaries of the known world…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
As my own book seeks to show, there are so many ways to approach the larger topic of Columbus and his worlds (or “Columbiana,” as I call it), and so many stories to tell that go beyond the well-known tale of his voyages. This book tells the story of the 1992 Quincentennial (or Quincentenary), crucial to understanding the relationship between the historical Columbus of five centuries earlier, and the controversial Columbus of today.
Although this is a scholarly book, and as such I found it impeccably researched and carefully written, I also thoroughly enjoyed its clear and engaging prose—spiced with dabs of dry wit. The twists and turns of the story are well introduced, as are the contrasts between how the Quincentennial is treated in different countries.
"An excellent book, lively and well written, and likely to appeal to a wider audience than the typical academic monograph."--William D. Phillips, Jr., author of The Worlds of Christopher Columbus
Sinking Columbus describes and analyzes the failure of the 1992 commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's voyage from Spain to the New World, once "universally" hailed as the "discovery of America." Despite this failure, the book recognizes the Quincentenary as an important and illuminating event in the recent political and cultural history of the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
The authors draw upon their personal experiences as…
The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus is (I hope) an authoritative biography that also explores Columbus’s many afterlives into the present, showing how our understanding of him is colored by manufactured mysteries surrounding his name, nationality, birthplace, ancestry, education, religion, intellectual vision, moral fiber, sexual proclivities, and resting place.
I argue that Columbus is best seen neither as devil nor saint, nor as uniquely talented, but as typical of the many Iberian and northern Italian mariners who became explorers, slave-traders, and conquistador-settlers. I also show how he became an iconic American hero, producing a parallel Italian American hero. In sifting through centuries of evidence to expose the many distortions of “Columbiana”, I reveal how we might come to understand Columbus and his legacies anew.
