Straits Audiobook Libro.fm

Description

For centuries Ferdinand Magellan has been celebrated as a hero a noble adventurer who circumnavigated the globe in an extraordinary feat of human bravery a paragon of daring and chivalry

Now renowned historian Felipe FernndezArmesto draws on extensive and meticulous research to conduct a dazzling investigation into Magellans life his character and his illfated voyage He shows that Magellan did not attempt much less accomplish a journey around the globe and that in his own lifetime the explorer was abhorred as a traitor reviled as a tyrant and dismissed as a failure

He probes the passions and tensions that drove Magellan to adventure and drew him to disaster the pride that became arrogance daring that became recklessness determination that became ruthlessness romanticism that became irresponsibility and superficial piety that became in adversity irrational exaltation And as the real Magellan emerges so to do his real ambitions focused less on circumnavigating the world or cornering the global spice market than on exploiting Filipino gold

Offering up a stranger darker and even more compelling narrative than the fictional version that has been glorified for half a millennium Straits untangles the myths that made Magellan a hero

Scintillating and compelling and told with all of Felipe Fernndez Armestos habitual verve and wit it is at the same time a sobering insight into how we have come to conceive our own increasingly globalized world Anthony Pagden author of Worlds at War The 2500Year Struggle Between East and West

Straits is a triumph of biographical writing With his characteristic vigor and panache Felipe FernndezArmesto circumnavigates Magellans life and times with a clearer object in mind and far greater success than ever imagined for this subject He shows us not only the skills and bravado but also the intrigues the selfdeception and even the insanity that animated Magellans quest Lincoln Paine author of The Sea and Civilization A Maritime History of the World

By pulling apart the usually willfully misread sources in their original languages with a detectives eye for contradiction and inconsistency Straits unravels a yarn of unmitigated failure punctuated by hubris meanness and crafty power grabs The Ferdinand Magellan who emerges from these freshly disinterred sources is no hero but rather a ruthless gentleman of fortune who died to tell the taleKris Lane author of Potosi The Silver City That Changed the World