This is the first book I have read written by the respected historian, book churner-outer, and jaywalker Felipe Fernández-Armesto and, I must say, he does a fine job. This sort of introduction to Columbus (Fernández-Armesto has written a longer bio of the explorer) is serviceable as both a biography and a work of intellectual history. The author places ol' Chris in his philosophical and intellectual context. Fernández-Armesto's Columbus is a strange mixture of Renaissance scientific wherewithal and Medieval mysticism. He shatters the myth of that nobody thought about a new world, as the antipodes were hypothesized for years; he points out that, Vespucci be damned, Columbus did in fact state that he had discovered a new continent. An excellent, and quick, book on Columbus. ( )