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Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
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Straits: Beyond the Myth of Magellan Hardcover – March 31, 2022

4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 53 ratings
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For centuries, Ferdinand Magellan has been celebrated as a hero: a noble adventurer who circumnavigated the globe in an extraordinary feat of human bravery; a paragon of daring and chivalry.

Now historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto draws on extensive and meticulous research to conduct a dazzling investigation into Magellan's life, his character and his ill-fated voyage. He reveals that Magellan did not attempt - much less accomplish - a journey around the globe, and that in his own lifetime, the explorer was abhorred as a traitor, reviled as a tyrant and dismissed as a failure.

Fernández-Armesto probes the passions and tensions that drove Magellan to adventure and drew him to disaster: the pride that became arrogance, audacity that became recklessness, determination that became ruthlessness, romanticism that became irresponsibility, and superficial piety that became, in adversity, irrational exaltation. And as the real Magellan emerges, so too do his true ambitions, focused less on circumnavigating the world or cornering the global spice market than on exploiting Filipino gold.

Offering up a stranger, darker and even more compelling narrative than the fictional version that has been glorified for half a millennium, Straits untangles the myths that made Magellan a hero.

Previous page
  1. Language
    English
  2. Publisher
    Bloomsbury Publishing
  3. Publication date
    March 31, 2022
  4. Dimensions
    0.04 x 0.04 x 0.04 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    152663208X
  6. ISBN-13
    978-1526632081
  7. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Publishing (March 31, 2022)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 152663208X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1526632081
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.52 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.04 x 0.04 x 0.04 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 53 ratings

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Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

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Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
4.1 out of 5
53 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Craig Batley
5.0 out of 5 stars Great packaging
Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2022
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Book, packaging, and delivery were great!
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Beverly P.
3.0 out of 5 stars The writing style was very erratic
Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2022
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I was interested in getting a "balanced" profile of Magellan, but the author didn't deliver. It was a bit disappointing.
One person found this helpful
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J. Groen
2.0 out of 5 stars Dripping in Cynicism
Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2022
The first five chapters of this book are boring. The author appears to be interested in showing how great his research is but gets lost in the details of the research including names, dates, locations, etc., and keeps repeating himself.

The book does get somewhat interesting in chapter 6 (if you can make it that far), and chapter 7 and 8 are interesting. Chapter 7 being about the effort to find the straits from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and chapter 8 crossing the Pacific.

But in his cynicism, the author essentially says so what, this trip was a failure. Then, he cynically says that like the Moon landing of 1969, this trip also was a waste.

However, he adds, Magellan did prove through his circumnavigation, which the author says he never really did since he died in the Philippines (at least dozens of times in the book). But he adds, so what "There are surely more flat-earthers in our world than in Magellan's".

If you don't mind reading cynical comments from an elitist professor, then read this book. However, I suggest that you only read chapters 7 and 8. Otherwise, I don't recommend this book. It is dripping in cynicism.
6 people found this helpful
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vmiman
2.0 out of 5 stars Hard to read
Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2022
I found this book hard to read. In addition, the maps were inadequate.
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Top reviews from other countries

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Neil C.
3.0 out of 5 stars More side-tracks than Magellan made himself
Reviewed in Canada on January 1, 2023
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The author seemed to relish in side-issues, didn't build a cohesive picture of Magellan (or the voyage). I went to our local library and got a book by a Nancy Levinson, and learned more in her 100 or so pages than in this author's 300. His research is thorough and his material is comprehensive - but the tale withers to a series of academic notes.
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Ian Thumwood
2.0 out of 5 stars Impenetrable
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 12, 2022
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This books got some stellar reviews in the broadsheets and in the BBC History magazine too. Having read quite a bit about the history of the Philippines in the last 18 months, I was very keen to read this book and learn about the man who discovered the islands for the Spanish. The publicity for this book said that it offered fresh research to cast Magellan in a more accurate light. I could not snap this book up quick enough.

Unfortunately, I have to say that this book is really hard work. Granted, the research is impressive but the effect is that by looking in to the minutiae is that Magellan becomes more distanced from the story. I was not aware until recently that Megellan had met his fate in the Philippines and Fernandez-Armesto's tome effectively sets out to explain how he ended there, what his original mission was , why it was a spectactular failure and how the myth of him circumnavigating the globe evolved. Given that the story involves shipwrecks, mutinies , spying and conflicts with indigenous people, there is a good story somewhere in this tale. For me, the problem is that the prose is obviously written by a non- natural English speaker and is often very difficult to read. It is much too florrid to make an exciting read and I feel an English author would prpbably have taken a different tact. Some chapters are almost inpenetrable and I felt that the first third of this book was really hard work. Not too interested in what books Megallan read nor the machinations in preparing for the expedition. The chapters of Megallan's early sailing career are also somewhat confusing and not helped by the lack of maps.

I would suggest that people who already familiar with this story will benefit the most from this book. I often read books about exploration and this effort compares unfavourably with others I have read insofar that it could do with futher and more detailed quality maps. This makes the first third of the book really difficult , especially as it is concerned with geography and the 16th century preception of the globe. What could be interesting becomes tedious. I was forever looking up the places mentioned in the text. A lot the book is quite technical and is merely setting the scene. When the expedition gets underway, the "real" history comes into play and the writer skillfully disects and analyses the various sources to try to establish a true. Given that this is maritime history, there is precious little about the boats used and the fate of the survivors as they slowly returned to Spain is largely covered in the summary which deals with the events after Megallan's death. There is nothing by the way of archaeology used to to amplify the story and much of the book requires an understanding of the political situation between Spain and Portugal.

Ultimately, this book is not really populist and the fact that the text is often incredibly complex means that this is probably not for a general reader. As impressive as the research is, I found this book maddingly frusrating. It is an interesting story yet the excitement of the expedition is somewhat missing , the author being more interested in looking at the primary sources and trying to understand what was really happening given the often conflicting acounts of the expedition given by various factions. Whilst some of his conclusion make interesting reading (incuding a favourbale comparison of the Spanish Empire in contrast with the British one - obviously the author is unfamiliar with the work of novelists such as as Jose Rizal who described Spanish management of the Philippines as "medieval" as last as the 1880's!) as well as the frequent references to contemporary culture make this book slightly eccentric to an English reader. In conclusion, Fernandez-Armesto has done his research well yet in recasting the story in a foreign tongue, he has made it almost as impenetrable as the Straits themselves.
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CT
5.0 out of 5 stars Conocimiento muy profundo de la historia de América en el siglo XVI
Reviewed in Spain on August 31, 2022
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El autor (FFA) tiene una capacidad intelectual singular, muy poco corriente. Mente muy aguda, siempre poniendo las acciones humanas en su contexto, y este dentro de un contexto más amplio. No se conforma con ningún tópico. Agota archivos documentales y bibliotecas sin que esto quede en mera erudición. Aporta una visión incomparable, muy sólida, del épico viaje de Magallanes desde su salida de San Lúcar de Barrameda hasta su fallecimiento.
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