The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher Columbus, His Son, and the Quest to Build the World's Greatest Library
Written by Edward Wilson-Lee
Narrated by Richard Trinder
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
At the peak of the Age of Exploration, Hernando Colón sailed with his father Christopher Columbus on his final voyage to the New World, a journey that ended in disaster, bloody mutiny, and shipwreck. After Columbus’s death in 1506, eighteen-year-old Hernando sought to continue—and surpass—his father’s campaign to explore the boundaries of the known world by building a library that would collect everything ever printed: a vast holding organized by summaries and catalogues; really, the first ever database for the exploding diversity of written matter as the printing press proliferated across Europe. Hernando traveled extensively and obsessively amassed his collection based on the groundbreaking conviction that a library of universal knowledge should include “all books, in all languages and on all subjects,” even material often dismissed: ballads, erotica, news pamphlets, almanacs, popular images, romances, fables. The loss of part of his collection to another maritime disaster in 1522, set off the final scramble to complete this sublime project, a race against time to realize a vision of near-impossible perfection.
“Magnificent…a thrill on almost every page” (The New York Times Book Review), The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books is a window into sixteenth-century Europe’s information revolution, and a reflection of the passion and intrigues that lie beneath our own insatiable desires to bring order to the world today.
Edward Wilson-Lee
Edward Wilson-Lee is a Fellow in English at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he teaches medieval and Renaissance literature. His research focuses on books, libraries, and travel, which during this project has involved journeys to and through Spain, Italy, India, and the Caribbean. He is the author of Shakespeare in Swahililand and The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books.
Related to The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books
Related audiobooks
The Alice Behind Wonderland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts: Twelve Journeys into the Medieval World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bookseller of Florence: The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Relic Master: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws: And Other Classical Myths, Historical Oddities, and Scientific Curiosities Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Professor and The Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Farther Than Any Man: The Rise and Fall of Captain James Cook Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Paper: Paging Through History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life Between the Tides Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rust: The Longest War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mudlark: In Search of London's Past Along the River Thames Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Meaning of Everything Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Barons of the Sea: And their Race to Build the World's Fastest Clipper Ship Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures: A True Tale of Obsession, Murder, and the Movies Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
European History For You
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Our Hideous Progeny: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sovietistan: Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Professor and The Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The War on the West Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Ghost Map Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Templars: The History and the Myth: From Solomon's Temple to the Freemasons Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: with Pearl and Sir Orfeo Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Royal Witches: Witchcraft and the Nobility in Fifteenth-Century England Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Iron, Fire and Ice: The Real History that Inspired Game of Thrones Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England: 400 – 1066 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of American Cemeteries Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Teutonic Knights: A Military History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Royal Art of Poison: Filthy Palaces, Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicine, and Murder Most Foul Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Reformation: A History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ripper: The Secret Life of Walter Sickert Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books
29 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A fascinating book that includes the biography of Christopher Columbus, the biography of Hernando (Ferdinand) Columbus, and the biography of a great library. The book gives the political and cultural context for the age of exploration and the changes that took place in Europe through the impact on Ferdinand, Christopher's son. The story of the library is fascinating as Ferdinand was centuries ahead of his time. Though the book is both history and biography, it is really a book for book lovers
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Excellent book about Columbus‘ second son and the incredible library he created and its significant contribution to knowledge today. Very well read. I would have liked to know however, more about Hernando’s personal life.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An Excellent book for anyone who is interested in Columbus the great saler and what has happened to him and his family after his death, really an amazing story to see what happened to his family especially his Illegitimate son Fernando from his mistress Beatriz De Arana,you will be surprised that unlucky his family like him doesn't enjoy any of the great fame or wealth or even reputation that they should gain from the unprecedented and the most important discovery that their father had done.