Books by Edward Wilson-Lee
“The reason this book is in here is, first and foremost, it’s a brilliant book. Even aside from what it tells us about Columbus, it’s magnificent. He picks a surprising topic that you wouldn’t think would support a whole book, which is the library created by Columbus’s youngest son—the illegitimate Hernando. You’d think: that’s an obscure topic, how’s he going to have the material to support that? But Wilson-Lee is very clever. He goes through the books themselves, talks about the library, and what it tells us about Hernando, and then his father. So, we get to a new way of thinking about Columbus, and a new way of unpacking the mythology about Columbus along the way, although that’s not Wilson-Lee’s primary purpose.” Read more...
The best books on Christopher Columbus
Matthew Restall, Historian
Interviews where books by Edward Wilson-Lee were recommended
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1
Columbus: And the Conquest of the Impossible
by Felipe Fernández-Armesto -
2
The Worlds of Christopher Columbus
by Carla Rahn Phillips & William D. Phillips Jr. -
3
Toward the Setting Sun: Columbus, Cabot, Vespucci, and the Race for America
by David Boyle -
4
The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Young Columbus and the Quest for a Universal Library
by Edward Wilson-Lee -
5
Sinking Columbus: Contested History, Cultural Politics, and Mythmaking during the Quincenterary
by Stephen J. Summerhill
The best books on Christopher Columbus, recommended by Matthew Restall
The best books on Christopher Columbus, recommended by Matthew Restall
Heroic explorer or harbinger of doom? The impact of Christopher Columbus has become the focus of intense debate—both ini academia and in the arena of popular opinion—in recent years. We asked noted scholar of colonial Latin American history Matthew Restall to recommend five of the best books that explore Columbus’s life and legacy.
