Books by Matthew Restall
Matthew Restall, educated at Oxford and UCLA, holds a chair in History at Penn State University. His two-dozen books, in seven languages, include Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest and When Montezuma Met Cortés. His most recent (all 2025) are Ghosts: Journeys to Post-pop, On Elton John, and The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus.
Interviews with Matthew Restall
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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—in both academia and 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.
