He knew nothing of celestial navigation or of the existence of the Pacific Ocean. He was a self-promoting & ambitious entrepreneur. His maps were a hybrid of fantasy & delusion. When he did make l&, he enslaved the populace he found, encouraged genocide, & polluted relations between people. 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 & weather, & of selecting the optimal course to get from A to B. Laurence Bergreen`s energetic & bracing book gives the whole Columbus & most importantly, the whole of his career, not just the highlight of 1492. Columbus undertook three more voyages between 1494 & 1504, each designed to demonstrate that he could sail to China within a matter of weeks & convert those he found there to Christianity. By their conclusion, Columbus was broken in body & 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, & economic.