Download or read book The Crown of Columbus written by Louise Erdrich and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 1999-03-03 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In their only fully collaborative literary work, Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich have written a gripping novel of history, suspense, recovery, and new beginnings. The Crown of Columbus chronicles the adventures of a pair of mismatched lovers--Vivian Twostar, a divorced, pregnant anthropologist, and Roger Williams, a consummate academic, epic poet, and bewildered father of Vivian's baby--on their quest for the truth about Christopher Columbus and themselves. When Vivian uncovers what is presumed to be the most diary of Christopher Columbus, she and Roger are drawn into a journey from icy New Hampshire to the idyllic Caribbean in search of "the greatest treasure of Europe." Lured by the wild promise of redeeming the past, they are plunged into a harrowing race against time and death that threatens--and finally changes--their lives. A rollicking tale of adventure, The Crown of Columbus is also contemporary love story and a tender examination of parenthood and passion.
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 Reading Columbus written by Margarita Zamora and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1993-06-29 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christopher Columbus authored over a hundred different documents giving testimony on the Discovery to Isabella and Ferdinand. These texts are examined for authenticity and authority, and Columbus's views on the Indians. America is viewed through European eyes that helped represent and shape the Discovery.
Download or read book Conversations with Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris written by Louise Erdrich and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 1994 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris, the most prominent writers of Native American descent, collaborate on all their works. In these interviews, conducted both separately and jointly, they discuss how their writing moves from conception to completion and how The Beet Queen, Tracks, A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, and The Crown of Columbus have been enhanced by both their artistic and their matrimonial union. Being of mixed blood and having lived in both white and Native American worlds, they give an original perspective on American society. Sometimes with humor and always with refreshing candor, their discussions undermine the damaging stereotypes of Native Americans. Some of the interviews focus on their nonfiction book, The Broken Cord, which recounts the struggle to solve their adopted son's health problems from fetal alcohol syndrome. Included are two recent interviews published here for the first time. In this collection, Erdrich and Dorris tell why they have chosen to write about many varying subjects and of why they refuse to be imprisoned in a literary ghetto of writers whose only subjects are Native Americans.
Download or read book COLUMBUS the Untold Story written by Manuel Rosa and published by . This book was released on 2016-05-20 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the year 1444, near long-lost Constantinople, a Christian monarch treacherously breaks his truce with the Muslims, but Fate double crosses him. He is crushed in battle. All of his personal knights are slain, and he vanishes without a trace. Some years later, on Madeira Island, 2,500 miles to the west, a mysterious Knight of Saint Catherine of Mount Sinai marries into the Portuguese elite . . . and has a son. Astonishing as it may seem, these two impossibly remote events have been connected -- and the clouded genesis of Christopher Columbus is thereby once and forever resolved. The key to unlocking the mystery was waiting in a place where nobody had ever looked before. 25 years of research has pieced together a stunning array of artifacts and data, from one end of Europe to another, from Asia, Africa and the Americas: a chapel ruin, a ceiling mural in a private palace, DNA test results, an impressive diversity of documents, keenly analyzed . . . and a sword, unearthed by a 19th century Bulgarian peasant, that found its way to a museum in Saint Petersburg. The study and comparison of carefully censored State archives also helped explain this life -- hitherto enshrouded in the deceitful machinations of power politics, false identities, and false discoveries in the Age of Exploration. Myth has at last been separated from fact, exposing what actually transpired. Being extremely fond of writing memoirs, journals and letters, the man known as Columbus left a great deal of this overwhelming proof himself. Many other clues have been painstakingly gathered and analyzed. Some were cryptically displayed in the details of portraiture and esoteric writings, others in the most obvious features of one of the greatest works of Spanish Baroque drama, on heraldry, on a gravestone, via signatures and pseudonyms. What emerges is the picture of a consummate double-agent, with a bold and grandiose agenda. Enter this 500-year-old labyrinth and discover the unimaginable: a medieval conspiracy so audacious, so massive, and so well executed that it fooled the world for half a millennium.The Christopher Columbus you knew will be history.
Download or read book Columbus written by Laurence Bergreen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He knew nothing of celestial navigation or of the existence of the Pacific Ocean. He was a self-promoting and ambitious entrepreneur. His maps were a hybrid of fantasy and delusion. When he did make land, he enslaved the populace he found, encouraged genocide, and polluted relations between peoples. He ended his career in near lunacy. But Columbus had one asset that made all the difference, an inborn sense of the sea, of wind and weather, and of selecting the optimal course to get from A to B. Laurence Bergreen's energetic and bracing book gives the whole Columbus and most importantly, the whole of his career, not just the highlight of 1492. Columbus undertook three more voyages between 1494 and 1504, each designed to demonstrate that he could sail to China within a matter of weeks and convert those he found there to Christianity. By their conclusion, Columbus was broken in body and spirit, a hero undone by the tragic flaw of pride. If the first voyage illustrates the rewards of exploration, this book shows how the subsequent voyages illustrate the costs - political, moral, and economic.
Download or read book Christopher Columbus and the Enterprise of the Indies written by NA NA and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-09-23 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1492, previously separate worlds collided and began to merge, often painfully, into the world-system in which we live today. Columbus's four Atlantic voyages (1492-1504) helped link Africa, Europe, and the Americas in a conflicted economic and cultural symbiosis. These carefully selected documents describe the voyages and their immediate impact on Europe and the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean. Symcox and Sullivan's engaging introduction presents Columbus as neither hero nor villain, but as a significant historical actor who improvised responses to a changed world. Document headnotes provide context for understanding Columbus's voyages within the broader context of fifteenth-century Europe and the policies of the Spanish crown. Maps, illustrations, a chronology, questions for consideration, and a selected bibliography invite students to analyze and interpret the documents.
Download or read book The Demon Redcoat written by C. C. Finlay and published by Random House of Canada. This book was released on 2009 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a powerful demon, summoned by the secret society of European witches known as the Covenant, tries to possess their newborn infant, Proctor and Deborah, embarking on a desperate journey to Europe to destroy the Covenant, uncover a dark, necromantic design of epic proportions. Original.
Download or read book Dogs of God written by James Reston, Jr. and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2006-10-10 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed author of Warriors of God comes a riveting account of the pivotal events of 1492, when towering political ambitions, horrific religious excesses, and a drive toward international conquest changed the world forever.James Reston, Jr., brings to life the epic story of Spain’s effort to consolidate its own burgeoning power by throwing off the yoke of the Vatican. By waging war on the remaining Moors in Granada and unleashing the Inquisitor Torquemada on Spain’s Jewish and converso population, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella attained enough power and wealth to fund Columbus’ expedition to America and to chart a Spanish destiny separate from that of Italy. With rich characterizations of the central players, this engrossing narrative captures all the political and religious ferment of this crucial moment on the eve of the discovery of the New World.
Download or read book A Yellow Raft in Blue Water written by Michael Dorris and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2003-03-05 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Follows three generations of Indian women beset by hardships and torn by angry secrets, yet inextricably bound together by kinship.
Download or read book The Mysterious History of Columbus written by John Noble Wilford and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1992 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was Christopher Columbus a visionary or an opportunist, a rapacious colonist or a Christian mystic? The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Mapmakers gives us a truly judicious portrait of the great navigator--one that is as much about the accretion of the Columbus mythos as it is an absorbing account of his life and character.
Download or read book The Book of Prophecies written by Christopher Columbus and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2004-04-09 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christopher Columbus returned to Europe in the final days of 1500, ending his third voyage to the Indies not in triumph but in chains. Seeking to justify his actions and protect his rights, he began to compile biblical texts and excerpts from patristic writings and medieval theology in a manuscript known as the Book of Prophecies. This unprecedented collection was designed to support his vision of the discovery of the Indies as an important event in the process of human salvation - a first step toward the liberation of Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim domination. This work is part of a twelve-volume series produced by U.C.L.A.'s Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies which involved the collaboration of some forty scholars over the course of fourteen years. In this volume of the series, Roberto Rusconi has written a complete historical introduction to the Book of Prophecies, describing the manuscript's history and analyzing its principal themes. His edition of the documents, the only modern one, includes a complete critical apparatus and detailed commentary, while the facing-page English translations allow Columbus's work to be appreciated by the general public and scholars alike.
Download or read book The Critics of Columbus written by Richard Di Giacomo and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2020-05-22 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The character and conduct of Christopher Columbus has come under more criticism than almost any other historical figure. This book will outline the various forms of attack upon Columbus over the centuries. This is what I call the Columbus conspiracy. It is a systematic attempt to assassinate the character of Columbus by a long line of people not working in conjunction, but nonetheless building upon one another cumulatively over the years. From the contemporary enemies of Columbus who sought to steal his glory and his wealth to later historians who sought to impugn his reputation in response to the hero worship that grew up around him in the 19th and 20th centuries. Every aspect of Columbus life has come under attack from his origins, his study and preparations, his proposals for the great ventures of exploration, his claims of discovering America first, his conduct towards the Native Americans and the Spanish settlers, his endless quest to find gold, the nature and primacy of what he discovered, and his role in the history of slavery, genocide, and environmental destruction. His legacy has been contested in a literal, legal sense in a lawsuit between his heirs and those who wanted to steal his fame and wealth. These appeared in the Pleitos Colombinos, or Columbian Lawsuits, which are examined in this context in detail for the first time in this book. It has also been contested in the literary and historical sense by a long succession of historians, which has sought to make a name for themselves by digging up more dirt on Columbus and further discrediting him. Columbus has been called a lowborn, uneducated imposter, pirate, usurper, rapist, mass murderer, poor sailor, accidental discoverer, bumbling fool, tyrant, liar, greedy gold hunter, religious fanatic, hypocrite, evil slaver, bloodthirsty and indiscriminate killer, and raving lunatic. This is just to name a few of the attacks made on him. It is difficult to understand why a single man has drawn such opprobrium when similar contemporary historical figures are not as harshly criticized. It is equally difficult to understand why Columbus has been singled out as the sole individual origin of the sins of an entire generation in first exploiting and then wiping out the Native Americans that he encountered.All of the various attacks on Columbus over the centuries will be discussed in this work and thoughtful and well-researched rebuttals will be given to them, including to some of the most outrageous and unfair claims. The purpose of this book is not to defend Columbus, but to call for a more mature and balanced treatment of him by historians and the general public. This is not merely a Columbus apologist treatment. It is a plea that Columbus be understood in the context of his times and that his accomplishments be given equal weight with his faults.
Download or read book The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books written by Edward Wilson-Lee and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 modern. At the peak of the Age of Exploration, Hernando Colón sailed with his father Christopher Columbus on his final voyage to the New World, a journey that ended in disaster, bloody mutiny, and shipwreck. After Columbus’s death in 1506, eighteen-year-old Hernando sought to continue—and surpass—his father’s campaign to explore the boundaries of the known world by building a library that would collect everything ever printed: a vast holding organized by summaries and catalogues; really, the first ever database for the exploding diversity of written matter as the printing press proliferated across Europe. Hernando traveled extensively and obsessively amassed his collection based on the groundbreaking conviction that a library of universal knowledge should include “all books, in all languages and on all subjects,” even material often dismissed: ballads, erotica, news pamphlets, almanacs, popular images, romances, fables. The loss of part of his collection to another maritime disaster in 1522, set off the final scramble to complete this sublime project, a race against time to realize a vision of near-impossible perfection. “Magnificent…a thrill on almost every page” (The New York Times Book Review), The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books is a window into sixteenth-century Europe’s information revolution, and a reflection of the passion and intrigues that lie beneath our own insatiable desires to bring order to the world today.
Download or read book Christopher Columbus written by Emma Carlson Berne and published by Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.. This book was released on 2008-08 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christopher Columbus and his crew had been sailing for five weeks into uncharted waters before finally reaching land one blazing hot day in 1492. It was a difficult journey that many predicted would be impossible, but Columbus proved them wrong and his voyage changed the world. Columbus had done it: he was the first man to reach the East by sailing west, and he was heralded as the Father of the New World. Columbus would take three more voyages to different places, but he remains best known as the pioneer who opened routes to the exploration and settlement of the Americas. Book jacket.
Download or read book History of the Indies written by Bartolomé de las Casas and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 1971 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Crown Ain t Worth Much written by Hanif Abdurraqib and published by Button Poetry. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Crown Ain't Worth Much, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib's first full-length collection, is a sharp and vulnerable portrayal of city life in the United States. A regular columnist for MTV.com, Abdurraqib brings his interest in pop culture to these poems, analyzing race, gender, family, and the love that finally holds us together even as it threatens to break us. Terrance Hayes writes that Abdurraqib "bridges the bravado and bling of praise with the blood and tears of elegy." The poems in this collection are challenging and accessible at once, as they seek to render real human voices in moments of tragedy and celebration.
