Columbus and the Conquest of the Impossible

📖 The Scoop

"The discoverer of America ranks among the world's greatest explorers. Columbus was a brilliant intuitive navigator with bold and challenging ideas, yet despite the grandeur of his achievement he died disillusioned and embittered. A self-educated man, Columbus drew his geographic theories from prevailing scientific notions about the earth and the current zeal for exploration in his day. We see his quest for royal patronage at the Courts of Portugal and Spain, and each of his four transatlantic journeys with their attendant perils. We also see him driven to the brink of madness by adversity, finding relief only in renewed activity of withdrawing into mysticism and his own obsessive world. In a compelling narrative, Felipe Fernández-Armesto shows how the idea of discovery of a new continent took root among contemporary geographers and how, contrary to popular belief, Columbus himself correctly identified the new-found hemisphere. Not omitting the defects in the explorer's education which led him to reverse some of his best conclusions about the nature of the New World, the author does justice to Columbus's successes as an explorer and his contribution as one of the earliest colonisers among the Indians." -- Provided by publisher

Genre: Biography & Autobiography / General (fancy, right?)