“Christopher Columbus: The Four Voyages” by Laurence Bergreen [Book Review]

I learned a lot about what I thought I had known about Christopher Columbus; my assumptions challenged, my misconceptions revealed. Laurence Bergreen’s “Christopher Columbus: The Four Voyages” is a literary unmasking of one of history’s most renown subjects, and ironically, one of its least understood. Much enmity and praise has been laid at the doorstep of ‘ole Christopher Columbus from his mysterious beginnings to the atrocities often ascribed to his name. This book bears down on them all.

STAR RATINGS:

COLUMBUS BOOK STATS:

• Published 2011
• 423 total pages
• 368 pages of text
• 13 chapters
• 3 multi-page color picture insets – 25 pages total
• 1 extensive Notes on Sources section
• 1 large and impressive Selected Bibliography section
• 1 Index section
• 1 Illustration Credits section
• 1 Dramatis Personae section – a who’s-who list of historical characters
• Hardcover available

MIND BLOWN! COOL THINGS I LEARNED:

• Columbus had 3 brothers that went with him on his voyages
• His own son Ferdinand accompanied him at a very young age
• The Great Navigator lived the life of an ascetic monk in between his voyages
• Columbus’ interaction with the Caribbean natives reminds me of Samuel de Champlain
• Christopher Columbus made FOUR voyages
• The mutinies against Columbus by his own men were barbaric

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS BOOK REVIEW:

“Christopher Columbus: The Four Voyages” by Laurence Bergreen attempts to chart the historical course of the infamous navigator and explorer Christopher Columbus. Not only that, it attempts to correct his bearing against other historical records by incorporating, to an overwhelming degree, the journals of Columbus and his crew as his primary viewpoint. That is to say, his writing is based largely, and sometimes overwhelmingly, on chunky quotations from extant sources such as journals, court records, and other writings of the time – primarily Christopher Columbus’ own journals, or surviving, possibly-altered, copies thereof.

While this makes the book soundly factual, evidentiary, and academic, at points it hardly makes for good reading. The problem with relying too much on extensive quotations, as any academician will tell you, is that it is often hard to synthesize your thoughts with the thoughts of the person you are quoting. Writing styles factor in too heavily and the writer ends up navigating around the person he or she is bringing to the forefront at the expense of the author him or herself.

This was the only critique I could find with Laurence Bergreen’s book “Christopher Columbus: The Four Voyages.” While I do get the point that our man Columbus lived a very peripatetic lifestyle and that quoting his own words and the words of his crew and family are the most lucid way to present the play-by-play of his four voyages, I would have benefited more from this book by the inclusion of strategically placed summary statements concluding large tracts of multi-voiced text.

On the positive side, and all to Bergreen’s credit, his narrative writing style makes page-turning an absolute joy. You know you really enjoy reading a book when you say you’re going to read 1 chapter and then keep reading well into the following one before placing your bookmark to rest! That was my experience with “Christopher Columbus: The Four Voyages.”

His writing style has a flow that entrances the reader and leaves him/her yearning to know what is going to happen next. Combined with 5-stars on my “cool word usage” scale, Laurence Bergreen is a master narrator by poignantly delving into the mind and motivations of one of history’s most iconic figures.

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“Columbus and his backers were coming to terms with the fatal calculus of discovery  . . . It was one thing, he realized, to visit a strange harbor, drop anchor, ask the priests on board to bless their cause, and sail away when the wind and tide permitted, another to establish a permanent, self-sustaining settlement: that was the difference between discovering an empire and maintaining it.” (p. 169)

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The difficulty in providing a master narration about the master of navigation also comes in the perceived historical duplicity of Columbus’ character. How do you balance the audacity and force of will of his character with the monstrous claims that many have made against Columbus and crew in terms of historical and cultural atrocities? Laurence Bergreen handles that valiantly.

I really enjoyed reading this book from cover to cover. I bought this book at a garage sale and after opening up its covers immediately decided that I could not put it down; it instantly jumped the line in the list of books I had slated to read next. I love Bergreen’s lively writing style and I have to say that I learned a lot to boot. The complexity of Columbus’ life as a visionary, motivator, navigator, and perpetual mistake-maker are deftly played upon in this book, carefully balanced and nuanced to force any historian, armchair or otherwise, re-evaluate and re-appreciate the legacy of Christopher Columbus.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

• Bergreen, Laurence. 2011. “Christopher Columbus: The Four Voyages.” New York: Viking Press.
• ISBN-13: 978-0670023011
• Amazon Link