Overview
āA captivating adventureā¦For lovers of history, Wilson-Lee offers a thrill on almost every pageā¦Magnificent.ā āThe New York Times Book Review
Named a Best Book of the Year by: * Financial Times * New Statesman * History Today * The Spectator *
The impeccably researched and vividly rendered account of the quest by Christopher Columbusās illegitimate son to create the greatest library in the worldāāa perfectly pitched poetic dramaā (Financial Times) and an amazing tour through sixteenth-century Europe.
In this innovative work of history, Edward Wilson-Lee tells the extraordinary story of Hernando ColĆ³n, a singular visionary of the printing press-age who also happened to be Christopher Columbusās illegitimate son.
At the peak of the Age of Exploration, Hernando traveled with Columbus on his final voyage to the New World, a journey that ended in disaster, bloody mutiny, and shipwreck. After Columbusās death in 1506, the eighteen-year-old Hernando sought to continueāand surpassāhis fatherās 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, the first ever search engine for the exploding diversity of written matter as the printing press proliferated across Europe. Hernando restlessly and obsessively amassed his collection based on the groundbreaking conviction that a library of universal knowledge should include āall books, in all languages and on all subjects,ā even material often dismissed as ephemeral trash: song sheets, erotica, newsletters, popular images, romances, fables. The loss of part of his collection to another maritime disaster in 1522ādocumented in his poignant Catalogue of Shipwrecked Booksāset off the final scramble to complete this sublime project, a race against time to realize a vision of near-impossible perfection.
Edward Wilson-Leeās account of Hernandoās life is a testimony to the beautiful madness of booklovers, a plunge into sixteenth-century Europeās information revolution, and a reflection of the passion and intrigues that lie beneath our own attempts to bring order to the world today.
This book title, The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books (Christopher Columbus, His Son, and the Quest to Build the World's Greatest Library), ISBN: 9781982111397, by Edward Wilson-Lee, published by Scribner (March 12, 2019) is available in hardcover. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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