Internet Resources
- Christopher Columbus: History.comChristopher Columbus was an Italian explorer who stumbled upon the Americas and whose journeys marked the beginning of centuries of transatlantic colonization.
- Podcast- Christopher ColumbusIn 1492, Genoese mariner Christopher Columbus – sailing for Spain – became the first European to reach the Americas since the Vikings 500 years earlier. It is one of the most significant events in world history. Columbus would go on to make four voyages to the New World in his lifetime, and our 7-part series on him covers all his exploits. He is, arguably, the most famous explorer in history.
Research & Reference
- Christopher Columbus: Credo ReferenceChristopher Columbus, whose voyages to the New World greatly changed the world's history, was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1451, the son of a middle-class merchant. As a young man, he apprenticed as a business agent for a trading company, and his travels took him as far as Ireland. Europe had long been interested in asea passage to the Far East because the longoverland trip was not very economical
Streaming Media
- The Real Life of Christopher ColumbusWas Christopher Columbus born in Genoa, Italy? Most definitely not, say an unlikely collection of experts from European royalty, DNA science, university scholars, even Columbus's own living family. This ground breaking documentary follows a trail of proof to show he might have been much more than we know.
- Christopher Columbus: Explorer of the New WorldChristopher Columbus set out to find a new route to Asia, but instead became the first Spaniard to set foot in the New World. Evidence now proves that the Vikings reached North America long before him, yet even in his own time, other explorers usurped his glory. From the dream that led him across the horizon to the fortunes that deserted him and the ongoing controversy over his true place in history, this episode of Biography sheds light on the life of Christopher Columbus—the man, not the legend. Period accounts, rare art and artifacts, and interviews with world-renowned historians are featured. Distributed by A&E Television Networks. (48 minutes) Distributed by A&E Television Networks.
- Secrets & Mysteries Of Christopher ColumbusWas Christopher Columbus born in Genoa, Italy? An unlikely collection of experts from European royalty, DNA science, university scholars, even Columbus's own living family so he definitely was not.
- The Enigmatic Christopher ColumbusUnderstand the complexities of Christopher Columbus who, in stumbling upon the Americas while attempting to reach Asia by heading West, touched off the massive Columbian Exchange of peoples, plants, commodities, and diseases. Dispel enduring myths, and explore Columbus's religious motives for launching what he called "The Enterprise of the Indies."
Books & Films: Check Out at McKee Library
Columbus
From the author of the Magellan biography, Over the Edge of the World, a mesmerizing new account of the great explorer. Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a trading route to China, and his unexpected landfall in the Americas, is a watershed event in world history. Yet Columbus made three more voyages within the span of only a decade, each designed to demonstrate that he could sail to China within a matter of weeks and convert those he found there to Christianity. These later voyages were even more adventurous, violent, and ambiguous, but they revealed Columbus's uncanny sense of the sea, his mingled brilliance and delusion, and his superb navigational skills. In all these exploits he almost never lost a sailor. By their conclusion, however, Columbus was broken in body and spirit. If the first voyage illustrates the rewards of exploration, the latter voyages illustrate the tragic costs- political, moral, and economic. In rich detail Laurence Bergreen re-creates each of these adventures as well as the historical background of Columbus's celebrated, controversial career. Written from the participants' vivid perspectives, this breathtakingly dramatic account will be embraced by readers of Bergreen's previous biographies of Marco Polo and Magellan and by fans of Nathaniel Philbrick, Simon Winchester, and Tony Horwitz.
The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books
"Like a Renaissance wonder cabinet, full of surprises and opening up into a lost world." --Stephen Greenblatt "A captivating adventure...For lovers of history, Wilson-Lee offers a thrill on almost every page...Magnificent." --The 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 Columbus's illegitimate son to create the greatest library in the world--"a perfectly pitched poetic drama" (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 Colón, a singular visionary of the printing press-age who also happened to be Christopher Columbus's 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 Columbus's death in 1506, the 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, the first ever search engine for the exploding diversity of written matter as the printing press proliferated across Europe.
Columbus and the World Around Him
This series meets National Curriculum Standards for: Social Studies: Civic Ideals & Practices Individuals, Groups, & Institutions Power, Authority, & Goverance Time, Continuity, & Change
1493
A deeply engaging new history of how European settlements in the post-Colombian Americas shaped the world, from the bestselling author of 1491. Presenting the latest research by biologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the post-Columbian network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico City--where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted--the center of the world. In this history, Mann uncovers the germ of today's fiercest political disputes, from immigration to trade policy to culture wars. In 1493, Mann has again given readers an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination.
Manifest Destinies
A sweeping history of the 1840s, Manifest Destinies captures the enormous sense of possibility that inspired America’s growth and shows how the acquisition of western territories forced the nation to come to grips with the deep fault line that would bring war in the near future. Steven E. Woodworth gives us a portrait of America at its most vibrant and expansive. It was a decade in which the nation significantly enlarged its boundaries, taking Texas, New Mexico, California, and the Pacific Northwest; William Henry Harrison ran the first modern populist campaign, focusing on entertaining voters rather than on discussing issues; prospectors headed west to search for gold; Joseph Smith founded a new religion; railroads and telegraph lines connected the country’s disparate populations as never before. When the 1840s dawned, Americans were feeling optimistic about the future: the population was growing, economic conditions were improving, and peace had reigned for nearly thirty years. A hopeful nation looked to the West, where vast areas of unsettled land seemed to promise prosperity to anyone resourceful enough to take advantage. And yet political tensions roiled below the surface; as the country took on new lands, slavery emerged as an irreconcilable source of disagreement between North and South, and secession reared its head for the first time. Rich in detail and full of dramatic events and fascinating characters, Manifest Destinies is an absorbing and highly entertaining account of a crucial decade that forged a young nation’s character and destiny.
Christopher Columbus and the Enterprise of the Indies
Focused on Columbus' voyages and their impact on Europe and the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, Christopher Columbus and the Enterprise of the Indies presents the voyager as a significant historical actor who improvised responses to a changed world while helping link Africa, Europe, and the Americas in a conflicted economic and cultural symbiosis.
The Worlds of Christopher Columbus
When Columbus was born in the mid-fifteenth century, Europe was isolated in many ways from the rest of the Old World and Europeans did not even know that the world of the Western Hemisphere existed. The voyages of Christopher Columbus opened a period of European exploration and empire building that breached the boundaries of those isolated worlds and changed the course of human history. This book describes the life and times of Christopher Columbus. The story is not just of one man's rise and fall. Seen in its broader context, his life becomes a prism reflecting the broad range of human experience for the past five hundred years.
Christopher Columbus Reading List
