Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe (P.S.)

Book Description

Ferdinand Magellan's daring circumnavigation of the globe in the sixteenth century was a three-year odyssey filled with sex, violence, and amazing adventure. Now in Over the Edge of the World, prize-winning biographer and journalist Laurence Bergreen entwines a variety of candid, firsthand accounts, bringing to life this groundbreaking and majestic tale of discovery that changed both the way explorers would henceforth navigate the oceans and history itself.

Customer Reviews:

Magellan Iluminated.......2007-10-01

The author brings the voyage and the societal context of the journey to the reader. The book contains what is likely to have been all of the evidence available, yet is lively and interesting. Anyone who enjoys the superb biographies by Ronald Chernow will enjoy this, too.

Was going good, but lacked that little "something".......2007-09-30

It seems that the author was very well documented. It was very clear his effort in keeping a "balanced" position, and not to be too much "judgemental". The author tried his best to make us understand how things in the 16th century use to work (if anyone thinks that our times are tough, take a look at those days). And for all that, I am happy. But there was missing that little "I don't know what" that takes a "good" book, into a "great" book. Anyway, the book is highly recommended for anyone who wants to know about that amazing story of humankind.

Good, overall.......2007-08-15

Good book overall though I am troubled by a description of Magellan's ancestry. According to the author, on his mother's side, the family name is Mesquitas. The author suggests that that side of the family may have been Jewish because Mesquitas refers to a mosque in Spanish. Huh? Muslims pray at mosques, Jews at synagogues. The family may have been Moors, not Jews.
Are there more inaccuracies?

A Very Impressive Read.......2007-07-13

I'm really glad historians are beginning to write for people who aren't preparing for a test and simply want a book that's as informative as it is enjoyable. This is one of my favorite books of all time. It's really unforgettable. Some reviewers obviously didn't like this, but that's life. As for me, I couldn't put it down and was wanting more at the end. Here you'll see Magellan, warts and all--plenty of warts, yet so much a man of principle even when he was misguided. What's so amazing to me is that Bergreen shows Magellan realistically standing alone for what he believes all the while facing challenges (natural and personal) that would make the most steel-hearted man alive flinch in a second. This is a portrait of bravery and dedication to purpose like I've never seen before in a man who is most certainly not without his faults. Read it and enjoy.

As exhilarating as the voyage itself.......2007-06-25

This book makes Columbus and even Cook seem like mere amateurs in comparison. Magellan is the main man! Bergreen knows how to write the story of the great explorer with the hand of a novelist. It makes a fantastic read.
As a follow-up I suggest you read the book "1492 - The year China discovered America". It puts things in perspective, like how did Magellan know about the strait from the atlantic to the pacific that would later bear his name?

Average customer rating:

Great subject for a children book
Who Was Ferdinand Magellan?

Who Was Ferdinand Magellan?
S. A. Kramer
Manufacturer: Grosset & Dunlap
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 044843105X

Book Description

When Portuguese sailor Ferdinand Magellan set sail from Spain in 1519, he believed he could get to the Spice Islands by sailing west through or around the New World. He was right, but what he didn't know was that the treacherous voyage would take him three years and cost him his life. Black-and-white line drawings illustrate Magellan's life and voyage, with sidebars and a time line that enhance readers' understanding of the period.

Customer Reviews:

Great subject for a children book.......2007-03-25

Great subject for a children book. I got this series of books for my daughter and she really enjoyes reading them. Great read and educational too.

Who Was Ferdinand Magellan?.......2004-09-24

As an adult I thought the story was very intriging and exciting. This was
a Magellan that was never protrayed in history books of yore. The drawings were absolutely beautiful, full of so much detail and interesting features. This book makes a marvelous present for children
learning about history. After reading this book, I can't believe that
Hollywood has never made a movie about Magellan!

Average customer rating:

A beautiful, graceful look at Chicago's past
dybek
A great writer
Amazing use of language
Its Inventiveness and Spirit are Undeniable

I Sailed with Magellan
Stuart Dybek
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Coast of Chicago: Stories
Childhood and Other Neighborhoods: Stories
Streets in Their Own Ink: Poems
Sixty Stories (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)
Brass Knuckles (Carnegie Mellon Classic Contemporary)

ASIN: 0312424116
Release Date: 2004-09-09

Book Description

Following his renowned The Coast of Chicago and Childhood, story writer Stuart Dybek returns with eleven masterful and masterfully linked stories about Chicago's fabled and harrowing South Side. United, they comprise the story of Perry Katzek and his widening, endearing clan. Through these streets walk butchers, hitmen, mothers and factory workers, boys turned men and men turned to urban myth. I Sailed With Magellan solidifies Dybek's standing as one of our finest chroniclers of urban America.

Customer Reviews:

A beautiful, graceful look at Chicago's past.......2006-03-23

I suppose I would love this book even if I weren't a Chicagoan. The characters are so richly crafted, and the action poignant yet well paced. Perhaps the most heartbreaking story is "Blue Boy," with its message in the final paragraph so lushly written I took a sharp intake of breath before reading it again--aloud. An interconnected series of short stories, not everything meshes, especially "Breasts," which takes a side trip into the life of a hit man. But for the most part this is a special, nostalgic look at a Second City that really doesn't exist anymore, but lives on in gorgeous detail in Dybek's prose.

dybek.......2006-02-26

stuart dybek is a gifted writer who truly understands the short
story. His characters are full of life and wonderfully human.
I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys great writing.

A great writer.......2004-12-08

This is timeless fiction of the highest order, on a level with the finest contemporary writers from Stephen Dixon to Philip Roth to Bliss Broyard. Dybek writes with depth, precision and deep feeling; this is the work of a lifetime sketching out a milieu (the Chicago Polish workingclass community) with loving, compassionate and haunting details. James T. Farrell and Nelson Algren were the pioneers of Chicago fiction, but Dybek digs deeper. This is unforgettable work, sketching out the turf he knows so well and making it as universal as Sherwood Anderson, Chekhov and Dostoyevsky.

Amazing use of language.......2004-06-25

The review below posted by Reggieroy captures my thoughts on this book exactly. The writing was beautiful, the characters so real I felt I knew them. I especially liked the stories of young Perry with his brother and his friends. I think my favorites were of the prom date he took to the junkyard and the one near the end about Perry and his Babushka.

Its Inventiveness and Spirit are Undeniable.......2004-01-18

Stuart Dybek's I SAILED WITH MAGELLAN arrives more than a decade after his previous book, a short story collection titled THE COAST OF CHICAGO. While it's neither a blockbuster nor a doorstop tome like Jeffrey Eugenides's long-awaited MIDDLESEX or Donna Tartt's years-in-the-making THE LITTLE FRIEND, I SAILED WITH MAGELLAN is definitely worth the wait, serving as a reintroduction to a writer who captures his old Chicago neighborhood with documentary detail and raconteur flourish.

Despite its billing as a novel, I SAILED WITH MAGELLAN is actually a series of short stories that have locales and characters in common. All feature a teenage narrator named Perry and all are set in the Little Village community of Chicago during the early 1960s. Dybek lovingly and often humorously evokes this time and place through telling observations.

Poor families use old bed sheets for curtains and veterans order shots for friends who didn't come back from the war. It's a dangerous, often discouraging neighborhood, and in strong, unfussy prose Dybek describes "the daily round of life where bag ladies combed alleys and the homeless, sleeping in junked cars, were found frozen to death in winter. Laid-off workmen became wife beaters in their newfound spare time; welfare mothers in the projects turned tricks to supplement the family budget; and it seemed that every day someone lost teeth at one or another of the corner bars."

Fortunately, Dybek lets his lively characters --- including a junior high writing prodigy named Camille Estrada and a slob hitman named Joe Ditto --- run wild in this setting. Rather than engineering plots and scenes for them, Dybek simply lets them tell their own stories, a rare talent that gives the book a personal, unrehearsed quality. Plus, it makes for some truly weird goings-on. As a coming-of-age story, I SAILED WITH MAGELLAN eschews any predictability in favor of a dreamlike flow of events and characters, many of which are supersaturated with local color.

There is, for instance, the Chickenman, who walks around town with a chicken perching on his head and pecking corn off his tongue. And there's Little Village's unofficial child saint, Ralphie Poskozim, who was born with blue skin: "The blue was plainly visible beneath his blue-green eyes, smudges darker than shadows, as if he'd been in a fistfight or gotten into his mother's mascara. Even his lips looked cold."

All of these strange characters are filtered through Perry's perspective, and as the novel progresses, he grows up and his concerns become more adult. Fortunately, as Perry gains more freedom, the stories don't lose their charm or their sense of wonder.

Memory works in flashes, not in fluid narratives, and it allows for exaggeration of facts. In the end these chapters cohere into something larger than a short-story collection, but the book is not like a proper novel. This is certainly not a criticism: the form of I SAILED WITH MAGELLAN may be unclassifiable, but its inventiveness and spirit are undeniable.

--- Reviewed by Stephen M. Deusner

Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire, from Columbus to Magellan
Average customer rating:

The Spanish Empire: Glorious and Devastating

Stick with Morison--The Master on This Subject

A fascinating story, a flawed telling

Fascinating

A pity, really

Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire, from Columbus to Magellan
Hugh Thomas
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

ASIN: 0375502041
Release Date: 2004-06-01

Book Description

From one of the greatest historians of the Spanish world, here is a fresh and fascinating account of Spain’s early conquests in the Americas. Hugh Thomas’s magisterial narrative of Spain in the New World has all the characteristics of great historical literature: amazing discoveries, ambition, greed, religious fanaticism, court intrigue, and a battle for the soul of humankind.

Hugh Thomas shows Spain at the dawn of the sixteenth century as a world power on the brink of greatness. Her monarchs, Fernando and Isabel, had retaken Granada from Islam, thereby completing restoration of the entire Iberian peninsula to Catholic rule. Flush with success, they agreed to sponsor an obscure Genoese sailor’s plan to sail west to the Indies, where, legend purported, gold and spices flowed as if they were rivers. For Spain and for the world, this decision to send Christopher Columbus west was epochal—the dividing line between the medieval and the modern.

Spain’s colonial adventures began inauspiciously: Columbus’s meagerly funded expedition cost less than a Spanish princess’s recent wedding. In spite of its small scale, it was a mission of astounding scope: to claim for Spain all the wealth of the Indies. The gold alone, thought Columbus, would fund a grand Crusade to reunite Christendom with its holy city, Jerusalem.

The lofty aspirations of the first explorers died hard, as the pursuit of wealth and glory competed with the pursuit of pious impulses. The adventurers from Spain were also, of course, curious about geographical mysteries, and they had a remarkable loyalty to their country. But rather than bridging earth and heaven, Spain’s many conquests bore a bitter fruit. In their search for gold, Spaniards enslaved “Indians” from the Bahamas and the South American mainland. The eloquent protests of Bartolomé de las Casas, here much discussed, began almost immediately. Columbus and other Spanish explorers—Cortés, Ponce de León, and Magellan among them—created an empire for Spain of unsurpassed size and scope. But the door was soon open for other powers, enemies of Spain, to stake their claims.
Great men and women dominate these pages: cardinals and bishops, priors and sailors, landowners and warriors, princes and priests, noblemen and their determined wives.

Rivers of Gold is a great story brilliantly told. More significant, it is an engrossing history with many profound—often disturbing—echoes in the present.

Customer Reviews:

The Spanish Empire: Glorious and Devastating.......2007-05-24

Rivers of Gold is an extraordinary book on the rise of the Spanish Empire from 1492 to 1522, which deals particularly with Spain's discovery and conquest of the Americas. Written by one of the most formidable and respected historians on the subject, Hugh Thomas, this book covers it all: the whos, the whats, the whens, the wheres, the whys and the hows are all answered for in great detail. Here you will be introduced to some of history's most influential figures, like; Columbus, Ponce de Leon, Queen Isabella, King Fernando, King/Emperor Charles, Bobadilla, Ovando, Cisneros, Magellan, and many, many others.

Spain's discovery and conquest of the Americas, as Thomas recounts, brought a certain excitement, pride and triumph to Europeans. Even today in the Western World, it is viewed as something rather glorious. And indeed, Columbus's voyage was with all respect quite the astonishing feat. But to the Indians who inhabited this "New World" for thousands of years, we see a much different picture; one of great devastation. As soon as the Spaniards discovered the Americas, they claimed it for Spain. They settled there, opened a brutal slave trade, ruthlessly explored for gold, and feverishly forced the Indians to adopt their culture and convert to their religion. The Indians, perceived by the Spaniards as uncivilized and therefore unworthy of freedom, became subject to cruel oppression. Other factors, like war, famine, and disease contributed to a rapid decline in Indian population. In some places, like, Jamaica, the Indians (in this case, the Tainos) were gradually exterminated. In Cuba, within a few decades, the Spaniards came to realize that they were running out of Indian slaves. The solution? Bring more slaves from Africa! This explains why Cuba, Jamaica, Brazil (colonized by Portugal), and other countries have such a large black and white population, including mixed, whereas the Indians - along with their ancient pagan religion - are either almost or entirely extinct.

But as Thomas tells us, not all Spaniards were inhumane in their treatment of the Indians. A very few, like the Dominican priest Bartolomé de Las Casas and preacher Fray Antonio Montesinos vigorously preached against their mistreatment. But unfortunately, to most Spaniards, that is; conquerors, explorers, settlers, and religious authorities such as Cardinal Cisneros and Bishop Fonseca, the Indians were regarded as mere savages, and by their treatment of them, equivalent to cattle. (Many Spaniards owned dozens and even hundreds of Slaves). Even the heroic Columbus himself was not exactly a nice guy either, since he was the owner of several slaves and was quite the greedy and sometimes deceiving type. But at the other extreme, I also found it disturbing that some of the Indians practiced cannibalism (although greatly exaggerated by the Spaniards to justify forced conversions and slavery) and human sacrifices, hence explaining why Indians were perceived uncivilized. But were the Spaniards not as barbaric? Did they not administer the Inquisitions where they tortured and burned thousands of people alive? Where public executions not as barbaric as human sacrifices? Although different by race and religion, their practices had some visible parallels, yet very different perspectives.

But the slave trade and mistreatment of the Indians are not the central focus of this book. Thomas writes about everything else of equal importance. However, I would suspect that some readers may not appreciate all the names and places that Thomas mentions throughout this book, which admittedly, can be overwhelming at times. Also, I found quite a few instances in which Thomas gives us too much detail about little things that the common reader may not really care for, like who's related to who and married to this person's cousin of that family... But besides the few dry moments in the book, I can't say anything too negative about Thomas's work. This book is too impressive to dismiss. I highly recommend it.

Stick with Morison--The Master on This Subject.......2007-03-07

I was not thrilled with this book at all. I enjoy reading books about early explorers, and I guess I expect others to live up to the standards of my favorite author on this subject, Samuel Eliot Morison, the late historian from Harvard University. As others have stated, minor figures are given too much coverage causing me to lose interest. Ferdinand Magellan was given too little coverage for his achievements. If you want to read about Columbus and others from this time period stick with "The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages" and "The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages" by Morison. They are riveting reading at their best.

A fascinating story, a flawed telling.......2006-12-26

Thomas subject is a fascinating one of discovery, royalty, conquest, cultures and their subsequent clashes and wars, but as others have noted, there is way too much petty detail that hampers the narrative flow. Mr. Thomas' Christian-European prejudices are indeed blatant but the importance of the history of the New World is undisputed and the writer provides an interesting persepective. Editors please!

Fascinating.......2006-10-05

It takes you back in time and you feel you are transfixed and spellbound by irresistible well-described and documented events.
You will discover that the people who immigrated to what is now USA and Canada, have decided to stay for good, whereas those who went to South America only sought Gold which they brought back home (to Spain and Portugal), when in power.
You will also discover that those who decided to 'stay for good', although ruled by politicians of indifferent and competitive stature, were not lacking the supreme quality needed at the time - the courage and the quest for adventure.
Despite myriads of challenges, they preferred to hold fast to their adopted new 'Home Countries' by encouraging their people to follow their steps and migrate.

North America was different.
It was approached in an illusion. The morality of the occupants declined that no obstacle was interposed to personal hatred and the bulk was oblivious to the gravity of cannibals of 'Cariban' origin.
Perhaps one drawback is this: The book gives us the impression that the ethnic population was virtually 'robbed'.

A pity, really.......2006-03-10

As others have noted, there are striking errors of detail. The botching of the account of Ponce de Leon's trajectory along the east coast of Florida struck me as minor but annoying. Getting the story of the day lost crossing the international date line going west exactly wrong (p. 509), exactly reversing Pigafetta's narrative, is simply unforgivable. It's a pity the book lacked, it would seem, a proper editor.

Voyaging: Southward from the Strait of Magellan

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Great Adventure; Thrilling Moments!

Voyaging: Southward from the Strait of Magellan
Rockwell Kent
Manufacturer: Wesleyan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Salamina
Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska--Including Extensive Hitherto Unpublished Passages from the Original Journal
Rockwell Kent: The Art of the Bookplate
In Patagonia (Penguin Classics)

ASIN: 0819564095

Book Description

Rockwell Kent is one of America's most famous graphic artists. He was also an avid traveler. Kent was especially fascinated by remote Arctic lands and often stayed for extended periods of time to paint, write, and become acquainted with the local inhabitants. Between 1918 and 1935, he wrote and illustrated several popular books about his travels. Voyaging, originally published in 1924, is the engaging story of Kent's sailing voyage to Tierra del Fuego. Kent is a charming writer and keen observer of both the land and its people. The book is beautifully and generously illustrated with Kent's distinctive woodcuts.

The first edition was published to great critical acclaim. New Republic wrote, "the land lives. A land where roses are as big as sun-flowers, where gales gnaw against bleak cliffs . . . At the end of the earth, there is the paradox of the dwarf and the giant." The Nation said, "Kent has caught the wild beauty of this ominous region -- iron crags ringed with the froth of blown surf, wind-tortured trees, distant peaks incrusted with dazzling snow; but out of the very heart of this bewildering beauty emanates a sense of unseen presences appallingly, implacably hostile to man."

Customer Reviews:

Great Adventure; Thrilling Moments!.......2000-04-11

Armchair adventurers who love sailing, roughing it through forests, bogs and mountains in strange lands, and meeting new people in brief encounters will love "Voyaging," by Rockwell Kent. The book begins with a shocking confession in the Introduction, and carries the reader through 184 pages of high excitement and magnificent descriptions of one of the most desolate and forsaken places in the world -- the area about Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America.

The book's main characters are (1) Kent, about 40; (2) his mate, a Norwegian of 26 years who started his life by shipping to sea under his father when 14, who after a few months of beatings jumped ship, cursing as he went, apparently never to see his father again; (3) a lifeboat, which Kent bought for $20 and named Kathleen, and with a group of tradesmen modified to include cabin, mast and rigging for sails; (4) the West Wind, which whistled ceaselessly and tossed the little boat about dangerously, and (5) a menagerie of people along the way who extended hospitality, most with loving kindness, a few with malice.

A touching moment came on Bailey Island when Kent asked 20-year-old Margarita García, the name of her three-month-old suckling daughter. The baby has no name because she has not been baptized, Margarita replied. There in that inhospitable land Kent converted a dirty hovel into a cathedral and "baptized" the child, giving her his wife's name Kathleen Kent García. Kent writes that Father García, a murderer who earlier was released from a nearby prison after serving time, said "the ceremony had pleased him particularly as it was in truth the baptism of his child."

Characteristically, Kent illustrates the book well with black-and-white drawings of the stark landscape, and a few portraits of his new acquaintances. He also includes several maps by which the reader may follow the men's attempt to sail around Cape Horn -- an adventure that did not always go according to plan, as the reader will discover. -- Allen Long, Arlington, VA.

The voyage of Magellan;: The journal of Antonio Pigafetta

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The voyage of Magellan;: The journal of Antonio Pigafetta
Antonio Pigafetta
Manufacturer: Prentice-Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Patagonia: A Forgotten Land: From Magellan to Peron

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Patagonia: A Forgotten Land: From Magellan to Peron
Brebbia C. A. , and Carlos Brebbia
Manufacturer: WIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1845640616

Product Description

This book describes the history of Patagonia from its discovery by Magellan to recent times.

So Noble A Captain The Life and Times of Ferdinand Magellan

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So Noble A Captain The Life and Times of Ferdinand Magellan
Charles McKew *Author SIGNED!* Parr
Manufacturer: Thomas Y. Crowell Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000J18Z52

Magellan's Voyage : A Narrative Account of the First Circumnavigation

Average customer rating:

A Must Read - but not a novell.
Not a Fun Read, but a Unique Resource
Well Worth it!
A difficult "must read"
the read's a slog & this edition hinders the reader

Magellan's Voyage : A Narrative Account of the First Circumnavigation
Antonio Pigafetta
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Magellan
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The Four Voyages: Being His Own Log-Book, Letters and Dispatches with Connecting Narratives.. (Penguin Classics)

ASIN: 0486280993

Book Description

Remarkable firsthand account by one of the few survivors of Magellan's epochal journey (1519–1522). Remarkably detailed record of new lands, flora and fauna, shipboard life, etc. Introduction. 28 halftones. Map.

Customer Reviews:

A Must Read - but not a novell........2006-08-21

First of all, You have to keep in mind that Pigafetta was not a writer. Hes was a noble from Italy, serving on the Diplomatic corps (if could call that in those days) that heard that Magellan was about to start a voyage never done before. The Pigafetta's drive was to see what kind of market was out there and how it would change the geopolitics established.
Globalization. Today we use the web, blackberries and airplanes. In those days it was all about merchant ships, swords and cannon balls.

Not a Fun Read, but a Unique Resource.......2006-06-10

What can one do when your only source for a major historical event like Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe was, in all probability, written by a spy? Antonio Pigafetta was an Italian from Vicenza who is thought to have written his journal for the Venetians, the Pope, or the Emperor Charles V.

It is interesting that Pigafetta wrote very little of the voyage out to the Spice Islands (the archipelago that includes present day Indonesia and the Philippines), and even less about the return under Sebastián de Elcano, who took over after Magellan was killed in battle at Cebu in the Philippines. Most of his relation is concerned with detailed descriptions of the people and lands of the Spice Islands, including detailed glossaries of words in the various languages that might be of interest to merchants trading in the area. Just what you'd think one would do if he were reporting back to someone else.

As a reporter of people and cultures, Pigafetta was far ahead of his time. As a reporter of a voyage of exploration, however, he is somewhat inadequate. It quickly becomes apparent that the workings of the ship are not his concern. After describing the horrendous 98-day voyage across the Pacific, he ends up by smugly saying that he himself did not get ill -- possibly because he may have had his own private food stock. He describes the relatively placid Cape of Good Hope off South Africa as the most dangerous part of the voyage, probably because he had a rare peaceful crossing of the otherwise stormy Straits of Magellan.

This edition is not the most attractive, and typographically it is difficult to read. The maps provided by Pigafetta serve only to show certain islands with respect to one another, and do not help the reader of his relation in the slightest in terms of their topography or even shape. But then Dover is known for producing relatively inexpensive reprints of works that are in the public domain. Any blame on the edition falls on Yale University, who produced the original.

Well Worth it!.......2005-02-28

Just to be clear, this is not a novel. It is a *detailed* account of the first circumnavigation of the globe. It is readable and presents first-hand impressions of the voyage's travelers. It is an interesting piece of history. For those that have travelled to other countries, this book will make you recall some of the first impressions that people have from other cultures.

I wonder how people get interested about this book. For me, it was the nobel prize acceptance speech by Garcia Marquez in 1982 which included generous references to Pigafetta's story...

A difficult "must read".......2003-11-09

I actually bought this book for its description of the Moluccas/Maluku - the very "Spice Islands" this historic voyage set out to find.
While Pigafetta did write more about those islands than about anywhere else they called at, the old-fashioned style made this a hard read. Like those reviewing it before me, I struggled to get through even those chapters relevant to the Moluccas.
Still, it is an important and valuable first hand account of a remote region and of course of a truly historic voyage.

the read's a slog & this edition hinders the reader.......2001-10-29

I bought this book after having found out about it in Daniel Boorstin's "The Discoverers". I thought it was amazing that a firsthand account of the first voyage around the world had survived and yet appeared to be of so little renown. I thought that the reviewer from Lexington, KY's remarks about its readability had to be wrong, I mean, what a find this had to be!

I was wrong. This book is far from arresting. I, too, had to struggle to read more than a few pages a night. The book is not really about the circumnavigation of the globe, it was written as a present to Kings and Queens who, at that time, were mostly interested in the spice islands, where they were, and what their minions could expect to find once they found them. Accordingly, the great majority of the book is concerned with the Moluccas, the islands to be found around them, and descriptions of their respective peoples and customs.

As the KY reviewer pointed out before me, the endnotes are mostly a hindrance to the generalist, consisting almost entirely of really picayune differences between the "Yale MS" and several others. Only a handful of this type of endnote are helpful to the generalist. No attempt is made to separate the endnotes that would help a layman sort out the sense of a confusing passage or word from these others. The introduction is mostly a discussion of the differences between extant manuscripts.

This edition is also poorly constructed -- the text is near the binding so you want to open it wide, but the glue is so hard that you're afraid that you'll crack it, so you end up reading the sections near the binding at an angle. The illustrations reproduced have no geographical value and so much of what would be interesting about them is lost because they are reproduced in black and white.

Book Description

"In this stirring account of an epic voyage beset by shipwreck, desertions, scurvy, and hunger, (Magellan) emerges as an all-too-human hero who tested the limits of the possible."--"Publishers Weekly."

Customer Reviews:

Definitive but readable history of Magellan's Voyage.......2005-07-22

Magellan's voyage occurred against the backdrop of the Renaissance... a truly amazing time in mankind's history. Magellan's discovery, for Europeans, of the extent of the Pacific Ocean and the size of world was an important part of the Renaissance's awakening of the mind.

This book is the most definitive of the more recent books on Magellan that I have read and history buffs should enjoy it. Details of Magellan's Armada's voyage are relatively limited. Few crew members survived, and even fewer wrote of their experiences. Mr. Joyner does an excellent job of bringing together all known data to present what likely actually happened. Where there is uncertainty, he will say so, and offer alternative explanations.

Other Opinions.......2003-10-31

If you find this book interesting, then check out Gavin Menzies book:"1421:The year China discovered America". It may shed some different light on all of the Portguese and Spanish explorers. It seems the Chinese explored the whole world and mapped it while the Europeans were still thinking the world was flat and full of sea serpents. The Portguese were the first to receive maps from the Chinese(called the 1428 maps). The Chinese explored and mapped the "Straights of Magellan" nearly a century before Magellan.

Fabulous book, well-researched, easy-to-read.......2002-05-05

The Kirkus Review above did not give Joyner's book justice. I've read many books on Magellan by authors such as Parr, Cameron, Hawthorne, Hildebrand, Zweig, and Silverberg, and Joyner's book provided the intricate detail that I was looking for. Joyner returned to the original sources to provide such details as the ships' rosters --- crewmembers' names, where from, job aboard, salary, etc. --- mini-biographies of key players, lists of supplies, weaponry, etc. It's far more than a biography! In reference to the book not conveying the full impact of Magellan's personality nor of the voyage, I didn't find that to be true. So many biographies of Magellan read almost as fiction, to such an extent that you can't separate fact from fiction, that it was refreshing to have a factual account, interesting, easily read and absorbed. Well done, Joyner.

Reads like a novel.......2001-05-20

When I read this book I thought I could be reading a novel, not a historical account. It is fast paced and exciting history. Whether or not you are familiar with Magellan and his first ever global circumnavigation, this is a must read for anyone interested in nautical exploration.

An highly readable, fully researched story on Magellan.......2000-08-10

I read this book several times and marvel at its great accessibility. It represents probably the best research effort on the great navigator. Joyner's annotated bibliography is extremely helpful to the serious student of navigation history in general and Magellan in particular. No other work in the past 50 years compares with the scholarly excellence of this book. A scholar who is just starting to get familiar with the story of the circumnavigation will find this book a complete pathway to all that must lie ahead for a thorough understanding of the greatest adventure at sea. This is a must book for both layman and scholar!

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