Columbus

Christopher Columbus crosses the Atlantic in 1492 hoping to find a trading route to China and instead makes landfall in the Americas. That landing is among the turning points of world history, but it is only the first of his four voyages.

Over roughly the next ten years Columbus sails three more times. Each trip is meant to prove that China lies only weeks away by sea and that the people he meets there can be converted to Christianity. These later expeditions are more violent, more dangerous and harder to judge than the first.

This is narrative history and biography. Laurence Bergreen re-creates each voyage in close detail and sets it against the background of Columbus's celebrated and controversial career. The book shows a man with an uncanny feel for the sea and superb navigational skills, who almost never loses a sailor, yet whose brilliance is mixed with delusion.

The first voyage stands for the rewards of exploration. The later ones show its costs in politics, morality and money, and by the end Columbus is broken in body and spirit. Readers get an adventure account with a sober, mixed verdict on its subject.