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No gamble in history has been more momentous than the landfall of Columbus's ship the Santa Maria in the Americas in 1492 - an event that paved the way for the conquest of a 'New World'. The accounts collected here provide a vivid narrative of his voyages throughout the Caribbean and finally to the mainland of Central America, although he still believed he had reached Asia. Columbus himself is revealed as a fascinating and contradictory figure, fluctuating from awed enthusiasm to paranoia and eccentric geographical speculation. Prey to petty quarrels with his officers, his pious desire to bring Christian civilization to 'savages' matched by his rapacity for gold, Columbus was nonetheless an explorer and seaman of staggering vision and achievement.
Two centuries: A chauvinist husband abandons his wife and goes to San Francisco in 1850, which, after all as a man he is entitled to do. Based on letters written to Penelope Potter Bradford's grandmother.
Read about the life of Christopher Columbus, from his birth in Genoa, Italy, to the voyages that changed both the Old and New Worlds forever.
The “outstanding” biography of the Italian navigator and explorer from the bestselling author of The Great Siege (The New York Times). Christopher Columbus, credited with discovering America in 1492, was a great explorer who forever changed the world—but his iconic image obscures a far more complex and fascinating life story. Born Cristoforo Colombo, the son of a weaver from Genoa, he renounced his father’s trade early in life and took to sailing. Though he began in the Mediterranean, Columbus soon found employment sailing the Atlantic Ocean, where he experienced shipwreck, inclement weather, and perhaps the Norse legends of uncharted lands to the west. With the help of Florentine as...
Long overdue in the eyes of many scholars, this comprehensive examination into the life of Christopher Columbus rehearses the many alternative theories of Columbus’s origins and the objections each has to the Italian theory of his birth. School children around the world are taught that Christopher Columbus was Italian, or, more precisely, a Genoese who sailed to the New World for the Spanish only because that country’s sovereigns gave him the money for the project; many scholars throughout history, however, have cast doubt onto this version of the explorer’s story. After digging up these counter-cultural theories and discussing their individual merits and prejudices, this scholarly investigation selects the theory most likely to be true: Christopher Columbus was a Catalan, born in the principality of Catalonia, a member of a family hostile to the dynasty that ruled his newly united country.
This definitive edition of Columbus's account of the voyage presents the most accurate printed version of his journal available to date. Unfortunately both Columbus's original manuscript, presented to Ferdinand and Isabella along with other evidence of his discoveries, and a single complete copy have been lost for centuries. The primary surviving record of the voyage-part quotation, part summary of the complete copy-is a transcription made by Bartolome de las Casas in the 1530s. This new edition of the Las Casas manuscript presents its entire contents-including notes, insertions, and canceled text-more accurately, completely, and graphically than any other Spanish text published so far. In a...