Why read Irresistible North?

Book cover of Irresistible North: From Venice to Greenland on the Trail of the Zen Brothers

Book description

A century before Columbus arrived in America, two brothers from Venice are said to have explored parts of the New World. They became legends during the Renaissance, and then the source of a great scandal that would discredit their story. Today, they have been largely forgotten.

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Why read it?

1 author picked Irresistible North as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Meredith F. Small

Author

Di Robilant again, of course. This book follows the trail of the story, apocryphal or not, made up or true, of the two Venetian Zen brothers who supposedly sailed to the North Sea in the 14th century. I loved this book because it is like a mystery story, full of questions with no real answers, and yet, in the end, I was convinced by Di Robilant’s investigation that Zens did indeed make it to Greenland and places North in the 1300s.

I really love a nonfiction book by an author who takes a sort of obscure topic and drills down…

From Meredith's list on The best books about how maps and exploration changed the world.