The most complex, compelling, controversial creature ever to board a boat

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/8121681-423/new-book-tackles-the-complexities-of-christopher-columbus.html

New book tackles the complexities of Christopher Columbus

By Jerelle Kraus October 10, 2011 12:38AM

Something always seemed fishy about Columbus. Why would an Italian seek Spanish sponsorship? Why celebrate a man who enslaved and beheaded the people whose homelands he claimed? If Leif Erickson landed in North America 500 years earlier, why does Columbus get the credit?

The answers lie in Laurence Bergreen’s ambitious new biography, Columbus: The Four Voyages, a spellbinding epic that’s simultaneously a profoundly private portrait of the most complex, compelling, controversial creature ever to board a boat.

This scrupulously researched, unbiased account of four death-defying journeys to the New World reveals Columbus’ paradoxical personality. Equal parts megalomaniac and mystic, he was both cunning and charismatic, paranoid and penitent, thin-skinned and tough. snip

The Admiral of the Ocean Sea forswore compasses, maps, and stars in favor of “dead reckoning.” A genius at reading movements of sea, sky and birds, Columbus was a peerless navigator. Though he lost men on land, he nearly never lost a sailor at sea. His fourth trip, documented by Columbus’ 13-year-old son, sailed the Atlantic in 20 days, a record even now.

[catbyte]

1. To us Indians he'll always be a villian. Sorry Italians.

Diane
Anishinaabe in MI

[Scuba]

2. +1

[Rabblevox]

4. I'm Anglo, and I agree with you...

If it was up to me, I'd give the land back in a heartbeat. I quit celebrating Columbus Day 35 years ago, when I began to learn what he was REALLY about. (hint? his racism would have gone over well in Nazi Germany.

I wonder sometimes what history would look like if the first native people he encountered killed the crew and sunk the boat. I think it would be better today.

[madmom]

5. I'm Italian and I agree!

[FSogol]

3. Wrong: "Columbus was a peerless navigator"

He thought he was in the West Indies, never set food on the main land of North America, and did not realize Puerto Rico was an island.