Download or read book Isabella written by Kirstin Downey and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engrossing and revolutionary biography of Isabella of Castile, the controversial Queen of Spain who sponsored Christopher Columbus's journey to the New World, established the Spanish Inquisition, and became one of the most influential female rulers in history. In 1474, when most women were almost powerless, twenty-three-year-old Isabella defied a hostile brother and a mercurial husband to seize control of Castile and León. Her subsequent feats were legendary. She ended a twenty-four-generation struggle between Muslims and Christians, forcing North African invaders back over the Mediterranean Sea. She laid the foundation for a unified Spain. She sponsored Columbus’s trip to the Indies and negotiated Spanish control over much of the New World. She also annihilated all who stood against her by establishing a bloody religious Inquisition that would darken Spain’s reputation for centuries. Whether saintly or satanic, no female leader has done more to shape our modern world. Yet history has all but forgotten Isabella’s influence. Using new scholarship, Downey’s luminous biography tells the story of this brilliant, fervent, forgotten woman, the faith that propelled her through life, and the land of ancient conflicts and intrigue she brought under her command.
Download or read book Isabella of Castile written by Giles Tremlett and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major biography of the queen who transformed Spain into a principal global power, and sponsored the voyage that would open the New World. In 1474, when Castile was the largest, strongest, and most populous kingdom in Hispania (present day Spain and Portugal), a twenty-three-year-old woman named Isabella ascended the throne. At a time when successful queens regnant were few and far between, Isabella faced not only the considerable challenge of being a young, female ruler in an overwhelmingly male-dominated world, but also of reforming a major European kingdom riddled with crime, debt, corruption, and religious factionism. Her marriage to Ferdinand of Aragon united two kingdoms, a royal partnership in which Isabella more than held her own. Their pivotal reign was long and transformative, uniting Spain and setting the stage for its golden era of global dominance. Acclaimed historian Giles Tremlett chronicles the life of Isabella of Castile as she led her country out of the murky Middle Ages and harnessed the newest ideas and tools of the early Renaissance to turn her ill-disciplined, quarrelsome nation into a sharper, truly modern state with a powerful, clear-minded, and ambitious monarch at its center. With authority and insight he relates the story of this legendary, if controversial, first initiate in a small club of great European queens that includes Elizabeth I of England, Russia's Catherine the Great, and Britain's Queen Victoria.
Download or read book Letter of Christopher Columbus to Rafael Sanchez written by Christopher Columbus and published by . This book was released on 1893 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Christopher Columbus written by Arnold K. Garr and published by Bookcraft, Incorporated. This book was released on 1992 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While many books have been written about the life of Christopher Columbus and his New World discoveries, this one has a different thrust--that Columbus was not just a skilled, courageous sailor but was also a chosen instrument in the hands of God. For Latter-day Saints, this conclusion is implicit in a vision Nephi saw and recorded two thousand years or so before the time of Columbus. In relating that scripture to the fifteenth-century explorer, the author observes, modern prophets and Apostles have noted the significance of America in the Lord's plan for humankind, the historical necessity for its discovery, colonization, and development, and the raising up thereon of a free nation wherein the kingdom of God--the gospel and Church of Jesus Christ--could be restored and prospered, from which place it could go forth to all peoples in the latter days. Clearly the circumstances would call for a discoverer--the right man in the right place at the right time. This book profiles the man from Genoa who apparently yearned from childhood for the seafaring life and who early began to acquire the nautical knowledge and experience that would make him the most widely traveled seaman of his day and would help him rise to the top ranks in that career. Seized by the spirit of adventure, he began to formulate his plan for the "Enterprise of the Indies, " his dream of reaching East by sailing west. And finally, after eight frustrating years of seeking sponsorship in European courts, he persuaded Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to finance the project. But adventure was not his only incentive. Stronger than that, it seems, was his spiritual motivation. A devout Christian, he gratefully and frequently credited God with all his blessings; he saw himself as a fulfillment of prophecy in this matter, as a literal instrument in God's hands; he was certain that he was God-inspired in his passionate quest for the westward route; and moreover, a major concern of his was to bring Christianity to the natives of the "Indies." Given this kind of spirit and his seafaring skills, and acknowledging his human weaknesses, Christopher Columbus seems to have been the kind of man the Lord could use for His purposes; and, indeed, modern Apostles and prophets quoted in this book affirm that he was that instrument. This interpretation is borne out also by the story told here of his four voyages to the New World. Published in 1992, the five-hundredth anniversary year of the first and most famous of those voyages, this book brings potent reminders of the important role played by a bold and courageous man who was chosen and guided as an essential forerunner of the restoration of the gospel.
Download or read book Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem written by Carol Delaney and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-09-20 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AFTER HE SET SAIL, the dominant understanding of Christopher Columbus holds him responsible for almost everything that went wrong in the New World. Here, finally, is a book that will radically change our interpretation of the man and his mission. Scholar Carol Delaney claims that the true motivation for Columbus’s voyages is very different from what is commonly accepted. She argues that he was inspired to find a western route to the Orient not only to obtain vast sums of gold for the Spanish Crown but primarily to help fund a new crusade to take Jerusalem from the Muslims—a goal that sustained him until the day he died. Rather than an avaricious glory hunter, Delaney reveals Columbus as a man of deep passion, patience, and religious conviction. Delaney sets the stage by describing the tumultuous events that had beset Europe in the years leading up to Columbus’s birth—the failure of multiple crusades to keep Jerusalem in Christian hands; the devastation of the Black Plague; and the schisms in the Church. Then, just two years after his birth, the sacking of Constantinople by the Ottomans barred Christians from the trade route to the East and the pilgrimage route to Jerusalem. Columbus’s belief that he was destined to play a decisive role in the retaking of Jerusalem was the force that drove him to petition the Spanish monarchy to fund his journey, even in the face of ridicule about his idea of sailing west to reach the East. Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem is based on extensive archival research, trips to Spain and Italy to visit important sites in Columbus’s life story, and a close reading of writings from his day. It recounts the drama of the four voyages, bringing the trials of ocean navigation vividly to life and showing Columbus for the master navigator that he was. Delaney offers not an apologist’s take, but a clear-eyed, thought-provoking, and timely reappraisal of the man and his legacy. She depicts him as a thoughtful interpreter of the native cultures that he and his men encountered, and unfolds the tragic story of how his initial attempts to establish good relations with the natives turned badly sour, culminating in his being brought back to Spain as a prisoner in chains. Putting Columbus back into the context of his times, rather than viewing him through the prism of present-day perspectives on colonial conquests, Delaney shows him to have been neither a greedy imperialist nor a quixotic adventurer, as he has lately been depicted, but a man driven by an abiding religious passion.
Download or read book Quichotte written by Salman Rushdie and published by Random House. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An epic Don Quixote for the modern age, “a brilliant, funny, world-encompassing wonder” (Time) from internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE • “Lovely, unsentimental, heart-affirming . . . a remembrance of what holds our human lives in some equilibrium—a way of feeling and a way of telling. Love and language.”—Jeanette Winterson, The New York Times Book Review NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME AND NPR Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television who falls in impossible love with a TV star. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand, gallantly braving the tragicomic perils of an age where “Anything-Can-Happen.” Meanwhile, his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own. Just as Cervantes wrote Don Quixote to satirize the culture of his time, Rushdie takes the reader on a wild ride through a country on the verge of moral and spiritual collapse. And with the kind of storytelling magic that is the hallmark of Rushdie’s work, the fully realized lives of DuChamp and Quichotte intertwine in a profoundly human quest for love and a wickedly entertaining portrait of an age in which fact is so often indiscernible from fiction. Praise for Quichotte “Brilliant . . . a perfect fit for a moment of transcontinental derangement.”—Financial Times “Quichotte is one of the cleverest, most enjoyable metafictional capers this side of postmodernism. . . . The narration is fleet of foot, always one step ahead of the reader—somewhere between a pinball machine and a three-dimensional game of snakes and ladders. . . . This novel can fly, it can float, it’s anecdotal, effervescent, charming, and a jolly good story to boot.”—The Sunday Times “Quichotte [is] an updating of Cervantes’s story that proves to be an equally complicated literary encounter, jumbling together a chivalric quest, a satire on Trump’s America and a whole lot of postmodern playfulness in a novel that is as sharp as a flick-knife and as clever as a barrel of monkeys. . . . This is a novel that feeds the heart while it fills the mind.”—The Times (UK)
Download or read book Isabella of Castile written by Nancy Rubin and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 1991 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Queen s Vow written by C. W. Gortner and published by Random House Digital, Inc.. This book was released on 2012 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an evocative, vividly imagined novel about one of history's most famous and controversial queens--the warrior who united a fractured country, the champion of the faith whose reign gave rise to the Inquisition, and the visionary who sent Columbus to discover a New World.
Download or read book Columbus and Isabella the Immortals written by Harriet Newell Jackson Ralston and published by . This book was released on 1893 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Isabel the Queen written by Peggy K. Liss and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Queen Isabel of Castile is perhaps best known for her patronage of Christopher Columbus and for the religious zeal that led to the Spanish Inquisition, the waging of holy war, and the expulsion of Jews and Muslims across the Iberian peninsula. In this sweeping biography, newly revised and annotated to coincide with the five-hundredth anniversary of Isabel's death, Peggy K. Liss draws upon a rich array of sources to untangle the facts, legends, and fiercely held opinions about this influential queen and her decisive role in the tumultuous politics of early modern Spain. Isabel the Queen reveals a monarch who was a woman of ruthless determination and strong religious beliefs, a devoted wife and mother, and a formidable leader. As Liss shows, Isabel's piety and political ambition motivated her throughout her life, from her earliest struggles to claim her crown to her secret marriage to King Fernando of Aragón, a union that brought success in civil war, consolidated Christian hegemony over the Iberian peninsula, and set the stage for Spain to become a world empire.
Download or read book Isabella s Legacy written by Ron Ramdin and published by . This book was released on 2017-01-20 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1492 what had only months before seemed an unlikely event actually took place in Seville. Through the cobbled streets, Christopher Columbus on his triumphant return after his first voyage to the 'Indies', paraded seven exotic-looking Indians who were accompanied by equally strange-looking green and yellow parrots. Imagine the confusion in the minds of these Indians as they walked through the city and the curiosity this spectacle had aroused among the local population for at this time, Europeans knew little about the people of Africa and Asia about whom they were largely informed by the travel literature of the 15th century. We should remember however that these 'Indians' were not from India, the place which Columbus had set out to discover and mistakenly believed he had reached. Fast forward almost five centuries to 1991 when I (the Grandson of an indentured labourer from India who had travelled to the West Indies to work on the sugar plantations) walked the streets of Seville on my way to deliver a Lecture at the University of Seville entitled: 'Towards 1992: Discovery... and Minorities in Europe.' I was born in Trinidad which was 'discovered' by Columbus on his third voyage to the New World, but I could not speak Spanish. Why? Therein lies a tale of the connection between language and Empire. European rivalry for colonial power resulted in Spanish Trinidad giving way to British Trinidad and so my direction of migration was to the 'Mother Country,' as Britain was then known. But as I became more knowledgeable about Queen Isabella, Columbus, Las Casas, Seville and Granada, I realised I was only partially educated for both Britain and Spain were important. My first visit to Spain the year before my Lecture had set in train a growing desire to see and learn more about the country. Thereafter, the idea of writing Isabella's Legacy emerged, took hold and propelled me to travel through Andalusia and later to Catalunya. Isabella's Legacy is a unique book, a rare interweaving of travel, memoir, history, cultures and identities; a journey of surprises - stunning impressions, a meditation on world history and significantly on contemporary Europe. Above all, it is a narrative not only of my discovery of Spain which, in turn, has led to self-discovery, but also a book which will hopefully enlighten and enchant the reader.
Download or read book Castile for Isabella written by Jean Plaidy and published by Random House. This book was released on 2008 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Isabella became the pawn of her ambitious, half-crazed mother and a virtual prisoner at the licentious court of her half-brother, Henry IV. Was she, at sixteen, fated to be the victim of the Queen's revenge, the Archbishop's ambition and the lust of Don Pedro Giron, one of the most notorious lechers in Castile?
Download or read book The Book of Privileges Issued to Christopher Columbus by King Fernando and Queen Isabel 1492 1502 written by Spain. Sovereign (1479-1504 : Ferdinand V and Isabella I) and published by Repertorium Columbianum. This book was released on 1996 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the moment King Fernando and Queen Isabel sponsored Christopher Columbus's voyage, they began issuing contracts, decrees, and privileges implementing the project. Previous editions of these collected documents, known as the Book of Privileges, have been published. Yet, because their ordering of the materials has followed that in which Columbus left them, use of these books has proven problematic. The Repertorium Columbianum edition is the first to present these documents in chronological order--providing a continuous historical narrative of the monarchs' and Columbus's enterprise. (The documents also appear, separately, in Columbus's arrangement.) Superbly translated, with historical and philological commentary, this edition of the Book of Privileges is certain to become the standard.
Download or read book The Diario of Christopher Columbus s First Voyage to America 1492 1493 written by and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 addition, the new translation, which strives for readability and accuracy, appears on pages facing the Spanish, encouraging on-the- spot comparisons of the translation with the original. Study of the work is further facilitated by extensive notes, documenting differences between the editors' transcription and translation and those of other transcribers and translators and summarizing current research and debates on unanswered current research and debates on unanswered questions concerning the voyage. In addition to being the only edition in which Spanish and English are presented side by side, this edition includes the only concordance ever prepared for the Diario. Awaited by scholars, this new edition will help reduce the guesswork that has long plagued the study of Columbus's voyage. It may shed light on a number of issues related to Columbus's navigational methods and the identity of his landing places, issues whose resolution depend, at least in part, on an accurate transcription of the Diario. Containing day-by-day accounts of the voyage and the first sighting of land, of the first encounters with the native populations and the first appraisals of his islands explored, and of a suspenseful return voyage to Spain, the Diario provides a fascinating and useful account to historians, geographers, anthropologists, sailors, students, and anyone else interested in the discovery-or in a very good sea story. Oliver Dunn received the PH.D. degree from Cornell University. He is Professor Emeritus in Purdue University and a longtime student of Spanish and early history of Spanish America. James E. Kelley, Jr., received the M.A. degree from American University. A mathematician and computer and management consultant by vocation, for the past twenty years he has studied the history of European cartography and navigation in late-medieval times. Both are members of the Society for the History of Discoveries and have written extensively on the history of navigation and on Columbus's first voyage, Although they remain unconvinced of its conclusions, both were consultants to the National geographic Society's 1986 effort to establish Samana Cay as the site of Columbus's first landing.
Download or read book Ferdinand and Isabella written by Melveena McKendrick and published by New Word City. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain are most often remembered for the epochal voyage of Christopher Columbus. But the historic landfall of October 1492 was only a secondary event of the year. The preceding January, they had accepted the surrender of Muslim Granada, ending centuries of Islamic rule in their peninsula. And later that year, they had ordered the expulsion or forced baptism of Spain's Jewish minority, a cruel crusade undertaken in an excess of zeal for their Catholic faith. Europe, in the century of Ferdinand and Isabella, was also awakening to the glories of a new age, the Renaissance, and the Spain of the "Catholic Kings" - as Ferdinand and Isabella came to be known - was not untouched by this brilliant revival of learning. Here, from the noted historian Melveena McKendrick, is their remarkable story.
Download or read book Isabella of Spain written by William Thomas Walsh and published by . This book was released on 1938 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Called by her people Isabella la Catolica, she was by any standard one of the greatest women of all history. A saint in her own right, she married Ferdinand of Aragon, and they forged modern Spain, cast out the Moslems, discovered the New World by backing Columbus, and established a powerful central government in Spain. This story is so thrilling it reads like a novel. Makes history really come alive. Highly readable and truly great in every respect!
Download or read book Columbus s Memorial to Ferdinand and Isabella written by Christopher Columbus and published by . This book was released on 1896 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
