NOVEMBER 2011 - AudioFile
Listeners will learn a great deal from this careful account of Columbus’s voyages to the New World. For example, although he was a first-class navigator, he was not a good administrator even though his duties as “Admiral of the Ocean Sea” demanded such skills. Nor was he the driving force behind the barbarity that the conquistadors brought with them. Histories such as this are difficult to narrate because there’s little dialogue and lots of alien words and peoples. Tim Jerome faces down the challenges admirably. His friendly American baritone keeps the listener’s interest as he navigates the long and detailed panorama. D.R.W. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
Ian W. Toll
What emerges in this biography, a worthy addition to the literature on Columbus, is a surprising and revealing portrait of a man who might have been the title character in a Shakespearean tragedy.
—The New York Times Book Review
Publishers Weekly
Columbus’s first voyage to the New World was one of the formative events of human history. But who was Christopher Columbus? Renowned historian and biographer Bergreen (Marco Polo) seeks to illuminate the complex motivations and historical circumstances that shaped the explorer’s life, and the inquisitive, stubborn, and supremely self-assured nature that led him to sail to the end of the world and beyond. Focusing on the lesser-known events of Columbus’s three later voyages and his disastrous, near-genocidal rule in Hispaniola, Bergreen’s captivating narrative reveals a man obsessed to the point of delusion with acquiring gold and sending it back to Spain, perpetually unsure whether he should convert, enslave, or annihilate the natives he encountered, and dismissive of the continent he discovered, forever hoping to escape America and find a quick passage to the riches of China and India just beyond the next wave. His last voyage ended in a shipwreck, and Columbus died in 1503 disgraced, exhausted, and demoralized, although the toll of his voyages was surely felt more keenly by the oppressed Caribs and Taínos than by the admiral himself. While sensationalist and lacking in scholarly rigor, Bergreen’s biography makes good use of the firsthand accounts of Columbus’s contemporaries, rendering a dramatic story that will appeal to general readership. 7 maps. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
"Laurence Bergreen's Columbus was brillliant, audacious, volatile, paranoid and ruthless. What emerges in this biography,- a worthy addition to- the literature on Columbus is a surprising and revealing portrait of a man who might have been the title charcater in a Shakespearan tradegy."
The New York Times
"Laurence Bergreen's ambitious new biography, Columbus: The Four Voyages [is] a spellbinding epic that's simultaneiously a profoundly private portrait of the most complex, compelling, controversial creature ever to board a- boat. This scrupulously researched, unbiased account of four death-defying journeys to The New World reveals the Admiral's paradoxical personality."
USA Today
"A compelling new book [that] details the explorer's trips to the New World, including three you haven't heard about."
Salon
"Once you have read this superb acount of Columbus' four voyages, you will never be content with the cliche about the Italian-born explorer's sailing the ocean blue in 1492. Author of many prize-winning popular history books on topics as diverse as Marco Polo and Al Capone. Laurence Bergreen is a New York-based scholar whose portrayal of the life and times of Christopher Columbus is a tour de force."
Winnipeg Free Press
"Laurence Bergreen's new book, refreshingly, is fluid in style in its style and comprehensive in its research. Richly illustrated and enhanced with maps that are as legible as they are relevant. Columbus: The Four Voyages is complex in its themes, intriguing in its substance and sparkling with suprises."
The Washington Times
"In this scrupulously fair and often thrilling account of his four vorages to the "New World," Bergreen reveals Columbus as brilliant, brave, adventurous, and deeply flawed . . . A superb reexamination of the character and career of a still controversial historical agent." - Booklist
Library Journal
The story of Columbus's first voyage to the New World is an oft-told tale that ends triumphantly for Columbus and with utter devastation for the natives he encountered. Bergreen (Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu) tells the exciting story of all four voyages, a narrative with castaways, mutineers, shipwrecks, and warfare, that shows Columbus to be vain and naive. Columbus believed that titles gave him legitimacy and authority, only to discover that what power he had quickly evaporated with each successive voyage. Even Isabella I, who had been Columbus's primary patron in the Spanish court, on her deathbed rejected his efforts to secure funding for a fifth voyage. VERDICT This is a well-written, even gripping book, but it has limited research value since it lacks a detailed scholarly apparatus. However, lay readers will find it entertaining and enlightening. Those interested in a work that contextualizes Columbus's voyages should instead consider Hugh Thomas's Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire, from Columbus to Magellan. [See Prepub Alert, 3/28/11.]—John Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY
NOVEMBER 2011 - AudioFile
Listeners will learn a great deal from this careful account of Columbus’s voyages to the New World. For example, although he was a first-class navigator, he was not a good administrator even though his duties as “Admiral of the Ocean Sea” demanded such skills. Nor was he the driving force behind the barbarity that the conquistadors brought with them. Histories such as this are difficult to narrate because there’s little dialogue and lots of alien words and peoples. Tim Jerome faces down the challenges admirably. His friendly American baritone keeps the listener’s interest as he navigates the long and detailed panorama. D.R.W. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
