Showing results for "Christopher Columbus" in Sports & Outdoors

Unabridged, 15 hours Read by TBD A mesmerizing, new account of the great explorer from the acclaimed biographer of Magellan and Marco Polo...

Two thousand books have been written about Columbus, most of them spirited defenses or relentless attacks. Recently, the balance has shifted: the Genoese navigator, once considered a hero, is now blamed for bringing plunder and genocide to the Americas. In The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus, historian Matthew Restall takes us beyond polemic, sifting through the evidence across nations, languages, and five centuries to explore the central questions of Columbiana.

Did Christopher Columbus discover America or a route to the Far East? He was an Italian explorer, navigator, and colonist who had a singular goal toward which he was driven. His courage was astounding, as he and his three small ships set sail across the Atlantic Ocean. Columbus and his men took precarious and dangerous journeys toward a blue horizon. All they had to depend upon were nautical charts, an astrolabe, and a quadrant. The maps he used were developed by more ancient astronomers such as Ptolemy and Eratosthenes – men who had never sailed the great sea.

Buoyant and determined, and having at last won the support of the king and queen of Spain, Christopher Columbus sailed west from Europe with three ships, confident he would reach the Indies by this new route and find the gold-laden civilization to the great Khan. After four risky expeditions in which he explored the Caribbean and landed on South America, Columbus died without acclaim, never knowing he had reached what would soon be known as the New World.

Christopher Columbus was one of the most courageous of the world’s explorers. He embraced risk in an era when the blinding expanse of the Atlantic Ocean frightened the Europeans. The cartography of the day was incorrect, as he learned through bitter experience. Columbus is credited with the discovery of America but never realized it during his lifetime. His career as a navigator was peppered with mishaps that shattered the ignorance of the age. Although he was no scientist, Columbus initiated new fields of study and analysis.

This impeccably researched and “adventure-packed” (The Washington Post) account of the obsessive quest by Christopher Columbus’s son to create the greatest library in the world is “the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters” (NPR) and offers a vivid picture of Europe on the verge of becoming...

Meyer Kayserling (1829-1905) was a leading Jewish scholar who wrote Christopher Columbus and the Participation of the Jews in the Spanish and Portuguese Discoveries by request of the Spanish government in honor of the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America. An assortment of fascinating individuals feature in the book, including the astronomer Abraham Zacuto and the jurist Luis de Santangel. Christopher Columbus himself is thought to be of Jewish descent, and many Jews provided support for Columbus’ voyages in the fields of technology, funding, and personnel.

The most seminal event of the last millennium might also be its most controversial. As schoolchildren have been taught for over 500 years, "In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue." In October of that year, the Italian Christopher Columbus immortalized himself by landing in the New World and beginning the process of European settlement in the Americas for Spain, bringing the Age of Exploration to a new hemisphere with him.

Cristóbal Colón es uno de los personajes más importantes y conocidos de nuestra Historia Moderna. Sin embargo para la mayor parte del público la epopeya colombina finaliza como una empresa gloriosa en 1492 con el descubrimiento del continente americano.

The most seminal event of the last millennium might also be its most controversial. As schoolchildren have been taught for over 500 years, "In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue." Like Christopher Columbus before him, Hernán Cortés was lionized for his successes for centuries without questioning his tactics or motives, while indigenous views of the man have been overwhelmingly negative for the consequences his conquests had. Just about the only thing everyone agrees upon is that Cortés had a profound impact on the history of North America.

Un hombre cuyo descubrimiento más grande, el de América, constituye una de las proezas más significativas de la historia mundial. Navegante, cartógrafo, almirante, virrey y gobernador general de las Indias al servicio de la Corona de Castilla, su hazaña cambió para siempre el conocimiento de la geografía de la época y dio paso a una nueva época: La del mundo colonial.