In the year 1444, near long-lost Constantinople, a Christian monarch treacherously breaks his truce with the Muslims, but Fate double crosses him. He is crushed in battle. All of his personal knights are slain, and he vanishes without a trace. Some years later, on Madeira Island, 2,500 miles to the west, a mysterious Knight of Saint Catherine of Mount Sinai marries into the Portuguese elite . . . and has a son. Astonishing as it may seem, these two impossibly remote events have been connected -- and the clouded genesis of Christopher Columbus is thereby once and forever resolved. The key to unlocking the mystery was waiting in a place where nobody had ever looked before. 25 years of research has pieced together a stunning array of artifacts and data, from one end of Europe to another, from Asia, Africa and the Americas: a chapel ruin, a ceiling mural in a private palace, DNA test results, an impressive diversity of documents, keenly analyzed . . . and a sword, unearthed by a 19th century Bulgarian peasant, that found its way to a museum in Saint Petersburg. The study and comparison of carefully censored State archives also helped explain this life -- hitherto enshrouded in the deceitful machinations of power politics, false identities, and false discoveries in the Age of Exploration. Myth has at last been separated from fact, exposing what actually transpired. Being extremely fond of writing memoirs, journals and letters, the man known as Columbus left a great deal of this overwhelming proof himself. Many other clues have been painstakingly gathered and analyzed. Some were cryptically displayed in the details of portraiture and esoteric writings, others in the most obvious features of one of the greatest works of Spanish Baroque drama, on heraldry, on a gravestone, via signatures and pseudonyms. What emerges is the picture of a consummate double-agent, with a bold and grandiose agenda. Enter this 500-year-old labyrinth and discover the unimaginable: a medieval conspiracy so audacious, so massive, and so well executed that it fooled the world for half a millennium.The Christopher Columbus you knew will be history.

Christopher Columbus' journal reveals that he was not only a man of God, but that his voyage in 1492 was motivated in part by his evangelistic zeal. Written in narrative, this story concludes with a discussion of the conflicts and controversies that suddenly surrounded the navigator during the quincentennial celebration of his accomplishment.

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this beautifully written masterwork, the Pulitzer Prize–winnner and bestselling author of Caste chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves. With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties. Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic.

The untold story of Christopher Columbus For Children is a story based on the journey lead by this famous sailor in 1492. Though the story is inspired by real events is mixed with fiction to entertain children. This book was created to help children understand the value of effort, courage, and perseverance. Expect a story with no complications, easy to understand, and hopefully gracious. I hope your children enjoy this book. I also hope that you can refer to it if your children stumble across situations of fear and/or mockery from other people. The goal is to have a story you can mention when your child encounters different situations in life that require being persistent and bold.

This is a classic American tale of dreams and obsession--the suspenseful, brilliantly written account of one eccentric man’s hunger to open space travel to us all: to let us rocket into orbit, return to earth, and soar yet again--thus transforming space travel forever. They All Laughed at Christopher Columbus Gary Hudson was seven years old when Sputnik flew, nineteen when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, and all he ever wanted to do was to travel into space. Between 1970 and 1996 he founded and disbanded five separate rocket-building companies, none meeting with much success. Then, in 1997, at the age of forty-seven, he launched Rotary Rocket. His goal was to develop and build the Roton, the world’s first manned, single-stage-to-orbit, fully reusable spaceship, capable of shuttling ordinary people into orbit and back in a single day. Elizabeth Weil followed Gary for two years, and in this book she brings to vivid life a seductively--perhaps delusionally--optimistic world where science and science fiction meld and fuse, and where imagination and invention collide. In California’s bleak and windswept Mojave Desert, Gary assembled a fanatical, mismatched crew of engineers and technicians, and Weil bears witness to their Roton endeavor, from first conception to final test flight. The cast includes a pyromaniacal engineer, a world expert on composite airframes, two former Navy test pilots, Gary’s infinitely patient wife, a third-generation Mojave motel owner, and an enigmatic and resourceful financier. At their center shines Gary himself, a man eternally reflecting the glow of a better, lighter, higher world--a world that, despite his flaws and failures, he perpetually convinces us we’re all about to reach.

A companion book for young readers based upon the explorations of the Americas in 1491, before those of Christopher Columbus.

"A lively look at how each generation of Americans has reinvented Columbus in its own image and for its own purposes. Was Christopher Columbus a hero or a villain, discoverer or destroyer? ... By focusing on popular representation of the explorer and his story through the years, rather than the actual man or deeds, Bushman chronicles the invention of Columbian tradition. In doing so, she provides a historical and cultural context for the quincentennial debate over Columbus's legacy, demonstrating that the current questioning is only the latest in a long tradition of revising the explorer's reputation."--From publisher.