Throw out everything you know about Columbus. In the first major biography of the iconic explorer in more than sixty years, Laurence Bergreen shows us both the madness and genius of the man. Everyone knows about 1492, but Columbus embarked upon three more journeys, made all the more amazing by the fact that he sailed on instinct alone, never losing a man in his crossings. And Columbus left his mark (not always for the better) everywhere he went.

The true story of Christopher Columbus was not only one of victorious discovery, it was marked by disaster, accusation, and betrayal. Ten short years after his discovery of the New World, Columbus languished in a Caribbean prison. There, awaiting the gallows, he plotted what he called his 'most treacherous' voyage - one that ended with the loss of all four of his ships and left Columbus and his crew shipwrecked with little hope of survival.

The author chronicles the details involving the last known voyage of explorer Christopher Columbus in 1500 and his attempts to regain his credibility after he had fallen into disgrace.

"An ambitious and highly entertaining novel of revisionist history by Laurent Binet, the author of the international bestseller HHhH"--

Born in 1451 in the seafaring nation of Genoa in northern Italy, Christopher Columbus grew up watching ships sail into the harbor loaded with riches from Egypt, Spain, England, and Belgium. Columbus was convinced that he could gain gold, silk, ivory, and much personal wealth for himself if he were to sail west from Europe to the east and trade with China and India. To achieve financial and political support for his dream, he lobbied various European...

Christopher Columbus...A boy who dreamed of sailing to faraway places...The captain of the Santa Maria, which was wrecked on a coral reef...An explorer who found the New World and never knew it!

"In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed across the ocean and discovered America. Right? Wrong! Columbus never actually set foot in what is now the United States. His voyages took him to islands in the Caribbean and along the coast of South America. The truth is, when Columbus first arrived, Indigenous peoples, including the Taino, had been living there for thousands of years, raising their families, running their societies, and trading with their neighbors....

"1493 for Young People by Charles C. Mann tells the gripping story of globalization through travel, trade, colonization, and migration from its beginnings in the fifteenth century to the present. How did the lowly potato plant feed the poor across Europe and then cause the deaths of millions? How did the rubber plant enable industrialization? What is the connection between malaria, slavery, and the outcome of the American Revolution? How did the fabled...