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