"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 ...
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"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 Col???n, 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. Hernando restlessly 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 as ephemeral trash: song sheets, erotica, newsletters, popular images, romances, fables. The loss of part of his collection to another maritime disaster in 1522--documented in his poignant Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books --set off the final scramble to complete this sublime project, a race against time to realize a vision of near-impossible perfection. Edward Wilson-Lee's account of Hernando's life is a testimony to the beautiful madness of booklovers, a plunge into sixteenth-century Europe's information revolution, and a reflection of the passion and intrigues that lie beneath our own attempts to bring order to the world today.
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Add this copy of The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher to cart. $30.54, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2020 by Scribner.
Add this copy of The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher to cart. $32.91, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2019 by Scribner.
Add this copy of The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher to cart. $51.50, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2019 by Simon & Schuster Audio.
Add this copy of The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher to cart. $64.32, new condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2020 by Scribner.
Add this copy of The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher to cart. $64.68, new condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2019 by Scribner.
Add this copy of The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher to cart. $65.95, new condition, Sold by MostlySignedBooks rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from San Francisco, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2019 by Scribner Book Company.
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Seller's Description:
New in new dust jacket. SIGNED by the author on an Alabama Booksmith bookplate affixed to the publisher's mark page (signature only). 1st edition, 1st printing, complete number line. New, unread copy with dust jacket in protective mylar sleeve. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 416 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. Certificate of Authenticity laid in. The PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize-winning description of the efforts by Christopher Columbus's illegitimate son to collect everything ever printed, including ephemera, and to develop a cataloging system for the collection. By the Guggenheim Fellowship-and Leverhulme Fellowship-winning author of "A History of Water: Being an Account of a Murder, an Epic and Two Visions of Global History" and "Shakespeare in Swahililand: Adventures with the Ever-living Poet". Rare signed. Where possible, all books come with dust jacket in a clear protective plastic sleeve, sealed in a ziplock bag, wrapped in bubble wrap, shipped in a box.
Add this copy of The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher to cart. $85.41, new condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2019 by Simon & Schuster Audio.