100 Books Like The Worlds of Christopher Columbus

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.

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. 

This is an oldie but a goodie. There are not many accessible books about the earliest years of Spanish colonization, but this is probably one of the best. With a terrific narrative style, Wilson showcases the years of Columbus's leadership at the head of the earliest colonizing efforts, and the increasing dissatisfaction of Spanish colonists towards Columbus, who was seen by many as a tyrant. In addition to this, Wilson reads between the lines of Spanish documents, and with the help of archaeological evidence, provides the reader with insightful interpretations of indigenous life, actions, and motivations.

This slim volume features six documents relating to the early years following Columbus’s arrival in the Caribbean, including two by Columbus himself. The core of the volume is anthropologist Neil Whitehead’s translation of the account written by Román Pané, the Jeronymite friar sent by Columbus to live among an Indigenous group in the northern part of Hispaniola. There Pané tried, with very limited success, to spread Christianity. He also set down in writing the origin myths and beliefs described by his Native informants, a unique reflection of the Indigenous world that existed when Europeans arrived on the islands. I like this collection both for the range of documents included and Whitehead’s insights from his scholarly and ethnographic work in the Caribbean.  

After Columbus Bartolomé de Las Casas probably was the most famous individual in the history of the early Spanish Caribbean. A man of great energy and determination, he wrote lengthy histories of the Caribbean and neighboring mainland as well as this much shorter, highly polemical one. He portrayed the horrors and abuses that the islands’ Indigenous peoples suffered at the hands of Spaniards and was instrumental in persuading the Spanish crown of the necessity of reforms that would offer Indians some protections from the extremes of exploitation. While he might have exaggerated the extent of Spanish cruelty, much of what he recorded can be corroborated. The writings of Las Casas are essential to understanding the Caribbean after Columbus.

Although not exclusively focused on the Caribbean, the articles in this volume illuminate the long and complex history of sugar production in the early modern Iberian world, beginning with the Iberian Peninsula itself and expanding into the Atlantic island groups and across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and Brazil. The last article focuses on sugar production in seventeenth-century Barbados, underscoring that a long history of sugar cultivation preceded the better-known establishment of sugar production in the English and French islands. Here the reader will learn how sixteenth-century Europeans eagerly incorporated sugar into their cuisines and diet, at times consuming prodigious quantities. Together these articles present a fascinating and often surprising early history of a commodity that has had a huge impact on the world.

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.

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.

Isabella of Castile is one of Spain’s most controversial and complicated queens. I have been teaching Spanish history for decades, so it was particularly thrilling for me to see how C.W. Gortner brings this dynamic woman to life. Having engineered her own marriage to Fernando of Aragon, Isabella contrived to back the voyages of Christopher Columbus and took an active part in the war against the Moors in Granada. She resists and finally succumbs to the demands of the fanatical inquisitor Torquemada, who urges her to rid the realm of Jews. Gortner recreates the climate of intrigue, the bloody battlefields, and the lush gardens of Andalusia so beautifully that you feel as though you were there.  

Gary Barwin had to make this list. He’s a Prospero of historical weirdness. I was torn between this book and his more recent novel Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy, which follows its titular character on a harrowing journey across Nazi-infested Europe to retrieve his shot-off-by-a-Dadaist testicles from a Swiss glacier. But Yiddish for Pirates wins the toss because it’s narrated by a parrot.

Aharon, a Yiddish-idiom-spouting 500-year-old ship’s parrot, traces the life of his Captain, Moishe, from a shtetl near Vilnius through Torquemada’s Inquisition and Columbus’ brutal conquest of the Caribbean to an eventual erratic career in piracy, with a couple of quests along the way. What makes Barwin’s work sing is the tragic humanity within the swirl of its jaw-dropping narrative ridiculousness.