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“A first-rate historical page turner.” —New York Times Book Review The acclaimed and bestselling account of Ferdinand Magellan’s historic 60,000-mile ocean voyage. Ferdinand Magellan's daring circumnavigation of the globe in the sixteenth century was a three-year odyssey filled with sex, violence, and amazing adventure. Now in Over the Edge of the World, prize-winning biographer and journalist Laurence Bergreen entwines a variety of candid, firsthand accounts, bringing to life this groundbreaking and majestic tale of discovery that changed both the way explorers would henceforth navigate the oceans and history itself. Now updated to include a new introduction commemorating the 500th anniversary of Magellan’s voyage.
Louis Armstrong was a character of epic proportions - married four times, with countless romantic involvements in and around his marriages, a life-long advocate of marijuana, who took his music from the streets of New Orleans to Hollywood, Europe, South America and, through his many recordings, the world.
In this authoritative biography of one of the most fascinating figures in world history, Marco Polos incredible odyssey--along the Silk Road and through all the fantastic circumstances of his life--is chronicled in sumptuous and illuminating detail. Illustrated.
“FASCINATING . . . Dramatic and timely.” —New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice In this grand and thrilling narrative, the acclaimed biographer of Magellan and Columbus reveals the singular adventures of Sir Francis Drake, whose mastery of the seas during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I changed the course of history. “Entrancing . . . Very good indeed.” —Wall Street Journal Before he was secretly dispatched by Queen Elizabeth to circumnavigate the globe, or was called upon to save England from the Spanish Armada, Francis Drake was perhaps the most wanted—and successful—pirate ever to sail. Nicknamed “El Draque” by the Spaniards who placed a bounty on his head, the no...
In this authoritative biography of one of the most fascinating figures in world history, Marco Polos incredible odyssey--along the Silk Road and through all the fantastic circumstances of his life--is chronicled in sumptuous and illuminating detail. Illustrated.
"The remarkable story of Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798), an impoverished abandoned boy who became the notorious libertine, famous writer, and correspondent with figures such as Voltaire, Louis XV, and Catherine the Great in decadent 18th-century Europe."--Provided by publisher.
In this brilliant history of Prohibition and its most notorious gangster, acclaimed biographer Laurence Bergreen takes us to the gritty streets of Chicago where Al Capone forged his sinister empire. Bergreen shows the seedy and glamorous sides of the age, the rise of Prohibition, the illicit liquor trade, the battlefield that was Chicago. Delving beyond the Capone mythology. Bergreen finds a paradox: a coldblooded killer, thief, pimp, and racketeer who was also a devoted son and father; a self-styled Robin Hood who rose to the top of organized crime. Capone is a masterful portrait of an extraordinary time and of the one man who reigned supreme over it all, Al Capone.
From the author of the Magellan biography, Over the Edge of the World, a mesmerizing new account of the great explorer. Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a trading route to China, and his unexpected landfall in the Americas, is a watershed event in world history. Yet Columbus made three more voyages within the span of only a decade, each designed to demonstrate that he could sail to China within a matter of weeks and convert those he found there to Christianity. These later voyages were even more adventurous, violent, and ambiguous, but they revealed Columbus's uncanny sense of the sea, his mingled brilliance and delusion, and his superb navigational s...
Originally published: New York: Viking Adult, 2011.
The extraordinary life of the of the great travellers of world history