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The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher Columbus, His Son, and the Quest to Build the World's Greatest Library

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Quest for knowledge amidst exploration and disaster.

If you're intrigued by the interplay of history, adventure, and the birth of modern knowledge, "The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books" could be the treasure you're seeking. It's like unearthing a forgotten map leading to the intellectual fervor of the Renaissance. Edward Wilson-Lee takes you on Hernando Colón's epic journey, not only to remote lands but also through the labyrinthine corridors of a library that aimed to encompass human understanding. It's history, it's drama, and it's a testament to the enduring quest for knowledge.

  • Hessell-Tiltman Prize (2019)
Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.
New

The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher Columbus, His Son, and the Quest to Build the World's Greatest Library

Regular price RM40.56 MYR
Unit price
per
Compare to estimated retail price: RM89.48 MYR  
ISBN: 9781982111403
Publisher: Scribner
Date of Publication: 2020-03-10
Format: Paperback
Related Collections: Travel, Biographies & Memoirs, History
Goodreads rating: 3.68
(rated by 1176 readers)

Description

This impeccably researched and “adventure-packed” (The Washington Post) account of the obsessive quest by Christopher Columbus’s son to create the greatest library in the world is “the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters” (NPR) and offers a vivid picture of Europe on the verge of becoming modern. 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
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Quest for knowledge amidst exploration and disaster.

If you're intrigued by the interplay of history, adventure, and the birth of modern knowledge, "The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books" could be the treasure you're seeking. It's like unearthing a forgotten map leading to the intellectual fervor of the Renaissance. Edward Wilson-Lee takes you on Hernando Colón's epic journey, not only to remote lands but also through the labyrinthine corridors of a library that aimed to encompass human understanding. It's history, it's drama, and it's a testament to the enduring quest for knowledge.

  • Hessell-Tiltman Prize (2019)
Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.