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The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books

Edward Wilson-Lee

3.72 · Rating details · 406 ratings · 118 reviews

Created in 1539, the Biblioteca Colombina in Sevilla contains over 3000 books. This is but a fraction of one man’s life spent collecting every book on every subject – including antique and modern worlds, science and law, as well as playing cards, pornography, and popular music.

Who was Hernando Columbus and how did he achieve this?

Set to the backdrop of Christopher Columbus ...more

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Hardcover, 416 pages

Published May 17th 2018 by William Collins

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Apr 04, 2019 Elizabeth A.G. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Meticulously researched book about Columbus's voyages and focusing on his illegitimate son, Hernando (Fernando) Colon, whose idea about creating, organizing and categorizing a "universal" library of the world's published items including books, pamphlets, maps, news articles, music, ballads, etc. was a voyage unto its own. Wilson-Lee provides us with the historical background of Hernando Colon's almost maniacal obsession to create his library and to restore the reputation of Columbus's legacy ...more

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Feb 11, 2019 Nancy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: netgalley

I was intrigued--Columbus had a son who created the world's greatest library? Why hadn't we heard about him? What happened to all the books? How did he even embark on such a quest? I had to read this book.

Hernando may have been an illegitimate son but in 1502 his father Christopher Columbus took the thirteen-year-old along on his fourth voyage to the New World. Hernando started his life familiar with lands and cultures that most of the world didn't even know existed.

The book recounts Columbus's I was intrigued--Columbus had a son who created the world's greatest library? Why hadn't we heard about him? What happened to all the books? How did he even embark on such a quest? I had to read this book.

Hernando may have been an illegitimate son but in 1502 his father Christopher Columbus took the thirteen-year-old along on his fourth voyage to the New World. Hernando started his life familiar with lands and cultures that most of the world didn't even know existed.

The book recounts Columbus's discoveries and his struggle to maintain his status and share of New World wealth for his heirs.

The Admiral of the Ocean reigned as the greatest explorer for only a short time before he was dethroned. He became old news as successive explorers stole attention and acclaim. Spain sought to discredit Columbus as the first to discover the New World, desirous of keeping all the New World wealth. Hernando determined to return and solidify his father's status by writing a book about his father's life--essentially the first biography.

The other part of the book is Hernando's thirst for knowledge, his obsession with collecting books of every kind, in every language--even if he couldn't read them. He collected prints and maps and art and ephemera gleaned from small booksellers.

He kept lists of his books and when he lost over a thousand books in a shipwreck he knew which ones he needed to replace. He developed methods to catalog and organize the books and to retrieve the information in the books.

Hernando was called upon to create a definitive map of the New World so that Spain and Portugal could finalize their territorial rights. He began an exhaustive dictionary but abandoned it knowing he could never finish it.

As he traveled across Europe, Hernando came into contact with all the great thinkers whose ideas were rocking the world: Erasmus, Luther, Rabelais, Thomas More. During Hernando's lifetime, Henry was looking to divorce Catherine, Suleiman was conquering the Eastern reaches of Europe, and the Holy Roman Emperor was crowned as the head of church and state. Luther's teaching had fueled the Peasant's Revolt and the anti-authoritarian Anabaptist movement arose.

In his later life, Hernando settled down and built his house and perfected his library. His garden was an arboretum containing plants and trees from across the world.

Hernando's achievement was remarkable. His goal to order all human knowledge for accessible retrieval was monumental. But after his death, most of his work and library were lost to neglect and time.

Through the life of one man, The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books gave me a panoramic view of the 16th c., an overview of the life and achievements of Christopher Columbus, and a biography of his son Hernando.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review. ...more

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Apr 26, 2019 Lissa Notreallywolf rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history-of-science, general-history, medical-history, bibliophile-books

At about page fifty I found myself asking whether this book was fact or fiction because it was so fabulous in the telling. It is described of as a biography of Christopher Columbus's son Hernando Colon, but fails in the usual sense of a biography because it is really the story of a library Colon collected, and his struggle to grasp the new horizons of information. Now that may sound dull, but I had no concept that Columbus made multiple voyages to the New World accompanied by his bastard son. ...more

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Aug 08, 2019 Ms.pegasus rated it liked it

Shelves: history, nonfiction, memoir-biography

A historian, no matter how meticulous, connects with a general audience only when he feels the confidence to invest something of himself. It's a confidence based on erudition, not, as in the case of pareidolia, of temperament or impulse. Although he is referring to his subject Hernando Colón (favorite son of Christopher Columbus), Wilson-Lee seems to also be voicing his own struggles in writing this book when he says: “How does one make a life out of words and paper? Capturing the essence of ...more

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Apr 17, 2019 Matt rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: other-history, philosophy, nautical-history, biography

This is a book that will ruin at least the next 3 books I read... it's so good that nothing else will hold up by comparison! It combines exploration, European Renaissance history, and philosophy of information in one endlessly fascinating package. I never knew about Hernando Colon, Christopher Columbus' impressive son. He saw so much of history... going on his father's 4th journey to the "New" World, traveling all around Europe, meeting with the Pope, working for the Holy Roman Emperor, sailing ...more

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Apr 01, 2019 Paul Pessolano rated it really liked it

“The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books, Christopher Columbus, His Son, and the Quest to Build the World’s Greatest Library” by Edward Wilson-Lee, published by Scribner.

Category – History Publication Date – March 12, 2019.

It is very difficult to assign a rating to this book because it is not intended for the casual reader. The book has been written by a scholar for scholars, or for those who have an overwhelming desire to learn more about Christopher Columbus and his son. It would score probably a 4 ...more

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Oct 01, 2019 Jerrie (redwritinghood) rated it liked it · review of another edition

I’m finding this one a little difficult to review. The audiobook narration was often dry, but I also think I was expecting something more about the book collection than was here. That being said, this was a good overview of Columbus’ voyages and his son Hernando Colon’s attempts to preserve his father’s memory and create an organized book collection. There are many other issues explored, though, that took the focus away from the book collection. For example, much was written about Colon’s ...more

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Mar 11, 2019 Nostalgia Reader marked it as dnf · review of another edition

Shelves: on-the-blog, ebook-netgalley

DNF at 43%.

I just about got a headache from how tedious these chapters were to read so far, and seeing as I have lots more interesting and fun books lined up at the moment, this is going to have to be a DNF.

It felt like a haphazard attempt at very specific history of Renaissance sciences and culture through the life of Hernando. I was hoping for an actual biography of Hernando, focusing heavily on his book and image collecting, with the inevitable brief forays into the culture and ways of the ...more

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Sep 04, 2019 Kathy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This really is amazing in its depth, breadth with its detailed results of dedicated research as well as the enlightenment it brings to a poorly educated soul (moi!). Yes, I have read some accounts of controversy over Columbus but they were more like newspaper articles here and there.
The author Edward Wilson-Lee is a Fellow in English at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he teaches medieval and Renaissance literature, thus the perfect candidate to study, gather material and expound clearly ...more

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May 02, 2019 Carlos rated it really liked it · review of another edition

3.5 stars for this book. The parts that dealt with Christopher Columbus and his son were very descriptive and at moments very well researched. The thing that I didn't like was that I felt the author expanded too much in different topics that while helped give historical context to what was being said , it also felt like it was too much and made the reading of the book a little bit morose. This was my first nonfiction book in a while so I might have been a little bit rusty (even though I saw that ...more

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Nov 30, 2018 Jim Razinha rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: arcs-review-copies

I received a eGalley of this from the publisher through Edelweiss.

The subtitle order is Columbus, Hernando (his son) and lastly, the library. And what you get is a lot of Columbus, nearly as much Hernando, other contemporary hsitories of the various crowns and explorers, and a fraction by comparison about the library Hernando assembled. In reading this, I kept asking myself how much was speculation and how much had some basis in history. More history than I thought, as the endnotes are detailed I received a eGalley of this from the publisher through Edelweiss.

The subtitle order is Columbus, Hernando (his son) and lastly, the library. And what you get is a lot of Columbus, nearly as much Hernando, other contemporary hsitories of the various crowns and explorers, and a fraction by comparison about the library Hernando assembled. In reading this, I kept asking myself how much was speculation and how much had some basis in history. More history than I thought, as the endnotes are detailed and extensive and provide an excellent collateral backstory to the main narrative. Unfortunately, an electronic interface is clumsy (see note below) and their value is hard won for the poor reader.

While the lives of Columbus and his illegitimate second son are fascinating, I wanted to know more about the library. One get slightly meaty bits and pieces scattered through the story of Hernando's acquisitional pursuits, a short passage of the tragedy that prompted the title (1,637 precious books found and purchased on a quest of the Continent went down with a ship in 1622 that was bringing them to Spain), and at last a detailed description of the makeup and size of what was the largest private library to date in the penultimate chapter and the epilogue.

I knew of Columbus's religious proclivities, but wasn't aware that he wrote something called the Book of Prophesies and my notes at this passage were "This just took a weird turn.":

It is mesmerizing to think that not only were the revelations of The Book of Prophesies being honed even as father and son explored new reaches of the western Atlantic, but, even more astonishingly, that the book's predictions about Tarshish, Ophir, and Kittim and their place in providential history meant they were in effect carrying with them a guidebook to unknown lands. The prophetic manuscript functioned like a map in reverse, providing them with landmarks that needed to be arranged on the landscape they were about to witness.

Apart from weird, that's rather absurd. Columbus wrote the thing! And was astonished by it's predictions? (The three names mentioned are either places or minor biblical characters descended from the Noah guy...apparently not exactly clear.)

Hernando was innovative in cataloguing his huge library, and even tried to address a serious problem of indexing. Wilson-Lee says "Searching an index is all but useless unless you know the term you are looking for, and in the instructions Hernando left for his assistants he directed them to use the most common term for the subject in question, as well as putting it under more than one heading when in doubt." Obvious, but often unstated...all but useless unless you know the term. Yep.

The story drags at points when it waxes academic, but Wilson-Lee does keep the interest up with a lot of information.

A note on the reading: in my PDF copy, the notes were not hyperlinked, which present challenges. The book would be better read as a hard copy, as the text is definitely enhanced by the notes and "flipping" back and forth is burdensome in an ereader.

A note to the editor: a couple of times the phrase "In the event..." leads sentences that don't syntactically jibe. Example, page 83 in my ecopy: "In the event, the new governor, Nicolas de Ovando - [...] - refused to oblige Columbus in any way and was even deaf to his pleas to be let into the harbor to shelter from the vast storm that was collecting over the Caribbean Sea." ...more

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Jul 26, 2019 Karima rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Astounding! Who knew? Not I.
This is a biography of Hernando Colon (1488-1539), the illegitimate son of Christopher Columbus (1451-1506).
Hernando's mission was to collect every printed material he could get his hands on. This included not only books but music scores, maps, pamphlets, images, letters, playbills, street postings, even a menu from a feast thrown by Pope Leo X featuring figs in muscatel, cockerel testicles and roasted peacocks “sewn back into their skins, to appear living.”
This book ...more

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May 18, 2019 Nina rated it really liked it

"Even fifty thousand books without order is not a library, any more than a crowd of thirty thousand undisciplined men is an army." Christopher Columbus's son Hernando, besides being a bibliophile of the highest order, was also something of a genius. Hernando's obsession coincided with the vast increase in books following the spread of the printing press. The sheer volume surpassed any librarian's ability to remember where a particular tome was located (and you had to be aware of what book you ...more

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Apr 05, 2019 Pamela rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, type-pre_pub, history_where-what, non_fiction, books, a-long-time-ago

The book was frustrating at times. It meandered and wasn't focused enough. In the places where the focus was retained, such as on Hernando Colón and his some of his projects, the book was fascinating. But it wandered, and at times seemingly for no reason, although occasionally it did add useful context to the biography.

Hernando Colón was the infamous Christopher Columbus's younger son. He also wrote a biography of his father which has been the vital book that created the legacy of Columbus. Yet ...more

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Jul 15, 2019 Carl Waluconis rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

All bibliophiles will love this extraordinary story of Hernando Colon who amassed a collection of over 5,000 books. He traveled through Europe meeting and purchasing. This included meeting authors of the time such as Erasmus and Thomas More. Hernando included buying prints and various illustrations. He included everything that offered new ways of thinking. His path crossed Durer's in his own travels, and Hernando sought out those prints. There were other collections at the time, but Hernando was All bibliophiles will love this extraordinary story of Hernando Colon who amassed a collection of over 5,000 books. He traveled through Europe meeting and purchasing. This included meeting authors of the time such as Erasmus and Thomas More. Hernando included buying prints and various illustrations. He included everything that offered new ways of thinking. His path crossed Durer's in his own travels, and Hernando sought out those prints. There were other collections at the time, but Hernando was different in that he included popular printings of tracts ad pictures, the equivalent in these times of saving comic books as they were first printed. He included writings in many different languages. As he did so, he searched for ways to organize these collections, cataloguing as he went from city to city in Renaissance Europe. At one point, most of the collection sank with the boat that carried it. Hernando still had the list, which he called the "Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books ". Hernando was different from his father in many ways, but he shared his determination. Hernando just continued collecting and cataloguing. Hernando had beeb there when his father arrived back after his first voyage, and then accompanied him on subsequent voyages. His extraordinary collecting started watching his father who gathered in his "Book of Prophecies" quotations and material that foretold his voyages being monumental, even mystical in their bringing the Christian God (and the Spainish Empire) to this new land. Columbus was not always welcome back to Spain as described in this history, and had to struggle to keep his family's claim to wealth from the voyages. Hernando picked up this struggle after his father's death, and eventually wrote a biography that definitely told only part of the story, but which eventually shaped the way Columbus was seen for many centuries. Perhaps the most important theme in this book was Hernando's efforts to organize the library. He made some bad decisions about separating the languages, which had consequences as to how other knowledges were perceived in Europe. But Hernando eventually created what amounted to cards for each volume with various pieces of information about them, including summaries (Book of Epitomes). This was a first kind of card catalogue, and as described by Wilson-Lee, what he wanted was a data base and search engine. Hernando lived in the thick of things in incredibly exciting and tumultuous times for Europe and the world. There are many more historial figures brought to life by the author, some of whom I had not previously heard of. Columbus's story is still being hashed out. The fate of Hernando's fabulous library I will leave for you to read in this absorbing book. ...more

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Jul 29, 2019 Daniel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, non-fiction, history

This review originally published in Looking FOr a Good Book. Rated 4.5 of 5

Hernando Colón had a passion for books and a vision for an organized library. Hernando Colón was also Christopher Columbus's illegitimate son.

Author/researcher Edward Wilson-Lee does a tremendous, detailed job of tracking down this story and getting in-depth on Hernando's story.

While the name Christopher Columbus is known by every American school child, we know so little about him (other than what every fourth-grader This review originally published in Looking FOr a Good Book. Rated 4.5 of 5

Hernando Colón had a passion for books and a vision for an organized library. Hernando Colón was also Christopher Columbus's illegitimate son.

Author/researcher Edward Wilson-Lee does a tremendous, detailed job of tracking down this story and getting in-depth on Hernando's story.

While the name Christopher Columbus is known by every American school child, we know so little about him (other than what every fourth-grader learns in our white-washed history books), so just learning about this child sets us up for a number of fascinating insights.

While Hernando is an illegitimate child, Columbus still took him along on his fourth voyage to the New World (Hernando would have been thirteen at the time). This could well have been the spark that led Colón to a life of pursuing knowledge. He searched for books, in all languages, and he collected maps and art portfolios, searching through small booksellers' collections on his varied trips. This led to his organization a catalog of his books - a way for him to determine whether or not a particular volume or work of art was already in his collection. It was because of this new method of cataloging that when a shipwreck occurred and Colón lost thousands of books at sea, he knew which ones needed to be replaced. And it was because of his vast collection of maps, as well as his familiarity with his father's travels, that Colón was asked to step in to create a map - the final, authoritative map - of the New World so that Portugal and Spain could once and for all settle on territorial rights.

But it was at this time that Hernando was also quite familiar with his father's fall from grace and standing - how Spain tried to take his discovery away from him - to honor other explorers, which would also take away the inheritance of Columbus's legitimate heirs.

This book is amazing. I think I learned more history and more sociology and more library science through this one book than I have in a very long time.

In many respects, the book has more history/biography about Columbus than I was hoping for. It was definitely a great lesson in history - I'd had no idea that Columbus lost so much favor - but what attracted me to the book was the idea of the development of the early library. These moments in the book ... the revelation of Colón's passion for books and his search to constantly improve his library ... were not only the reason I started this, but the best moments of the book.

Looking for a good book? If you like history, if you like learning something very new about something very old, if the history of the printed word fascinates you, then The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books by Edward Wilson-Lee is a book you really ought to read.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.
...more

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Nov 09, 2019 William Schram rated it liked it

Shelves: biography, books-about-books, non-fiction, history

Hernando Colón was a man obsessed. He wanted to create something akin to the Internet back in the Age of Sail. While I say the Internet, it would be more accurate to say that Colón wanted to build a complete repository of knowledge. The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books is written by Edward Wilson-Lee and recounts the hefty task that lay ahead of Colón and his eventual failure due to age and various misfortunes.

What was Colón’s plan you may ask? It was nothing less than the gathering of every piece ...more

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Aug 11, 2019 Peter (Pete) Mcloughlin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 0500-to-1500-ce, 00000good-things, 1500-to-1700, general-history, nonfiction, european-history, intellectual-history, 1990-to-2019, american-history, education

A biography can often explain the times a person lives in as much as the person themselves. Ferdinand Columbus the son of the famous explorer lived at the intersection of the age of European Exploration, The Gutenberg revolution of print, the reformation, and the aftermath of the Spanish Inquisition. He saw his fathers troubles with debts after being a hero in the new world. He amassed a library that rivaled any of its time. He collected the works in the mushrooming print culture that was ...more

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Mar 12, 2019 Rhiannon Johnson rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Read my full review on my blog: https://ivoryowlreviews.blogspot.com/...

**I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review**

I now have a special place in my heart for Hernando Colón. His collections and organizational systems are totally mind-boggling and absolutely fascinating. As a "natural son" (not the product of a legitimate union) Colón could "win legitimacy only by showing himself to be his father's son in spirit." Colón strove to achieve this distinction ...more

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Apr 15, 2019 Lindy rated it it was ok

This was boring and tedious.

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Dec 23, 2019 Al Berry rated it liked it

An okay book that tries to ride two horses; Columbus and his voyages of exploration as well as his son’s efforts at building a library. It was interesting and I learned a lot, but it wasn’t really a cohesive book.

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Jul 17, 2019 Begona Fernandez rated it really liked it

Half as a joke and half seriously I told my boyfriend 'Look this man had 20.000 books'. Many more than I currently have. I really liked this book because I really like the man whose life it narrates. An ambitious man that wanted to create the universal library and collect all the world's knowledge so anyone could use it.
His father and brother were not half as interesting as him.

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Jun 26, 2019 Norm Hess rated it really liked it

Christopher Columbus, for better or worse, lived an extraordinary life and at times must have been a bit of a mad man. His second son Hernando Colon, or Ferdinand Columbus, seems to have kept a more even keel while living an equally ambitious and perhaps more colorful career. The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books, by Edward Wilson-Lee, is a biography of Hernando that is framed around his obsession with collecting and organizing written work and other ephemera, including maps, prints and sheet ...more

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Jan 02, 2019 Bethan Wallace rated it really liked it

Really fascinating premise, since I'd never even heard of Columbus' son. Whether it's that I prefer more raunchy biographies, or Hernando's life just wasn't really that interesting, I found that I wasn't exactly rushing to get back to it.

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Nov 25, 2019 Cheryl Gatling added it

Usually with a book that contains lots of names and places and dates, as this one does, I like to take some notes, to make sure I get the details right, but here is a review completely off the top of my head, with just the Most Important Points of the book, as I remember them.

Christopher Columbus had two illegitimate sons, Hernando, whom this story is about, and another one, I think Diego. After Columbus returned from his first voyage to the new world, he was a celebrity. His boys were ...more

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May 16, 2019 Steve Majerus-Collins rated it liked it

Shelves: history, biography

Hernando Colon, an illegitimate son of Columbus, had a life beyond imagining. He voyaged with his father to the New World, faced mutiny, wound up a virtual castaway for a year and much, much more. It's an astonishing tale. And after all, he went on, back in Spain, to claim a serious spot in the royal court, travel through Europe as the Renaissance gave way to the Reformation, and become one of the world's great book collectors as well.
I give Edward Wilson-Lee credit for pulling together this ...more

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Jun 07, 2019 Cindy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Christopher Columbus’ son Hernando was mad for books, pamphlets, sheet music, art prints, and every kind of printed material. He dreamed of collecting all he could and organizing into a usable, searchable, perpetually growing library. But how can you do that? How can you organize thousands and thousands of items in a way that makes sense and makes every item “find-able”? Hernando was among for the first to grapple with this idea and the creation of his rudimentary data bases was fascinating to ...more

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Jul 19, 2018 Eleanor rated it liked it

Shelves: work-heywood-hill

The premise: Partly a biography of Hernando Colon, son of Christopher Columbus and his father’s first biographer; partly an account of Hernando’s attempt to build the first truly universal library.

How I’d (cynically) sell it: Fans of Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts, as well as people who get nerdy about the history of information technology, might like this.

The good bits: Some great analogies drawn between the idea of the universal library and the Internet. Hernando Colon’s life also ...more

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Jun 19, 2019 Judith rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, biography, cultural-history, travel, adventure, naval-history, world-history, manuscripts, books-about

In trying to shelve this book, i.e. catalog it, I felt like I was Hernando Colo'n (best I can do for the accent) or Columbus, trying to determine a way to organize the knowledge) i.e. topics covered in this book-cum-biography-cum-many other things. For unless I shelve it correctly GoodReaders interested in the Renaissance, history of the internet, and many other topics will miss it. To obtain more knowledge one must "know" what knowledge is out there; undiscovered knowledge is unknowable.

And In trying to shelve this book, i.e. catalog it, I felt like I was Hernando Colo'n (best I can do for the accent) or Columbus, trying to determine a way to organize the knowledge) i.e. topics covered in this book-cum-biography-cum-many other things. For unless I shelve it correctly GoodReaders interested in the Renaissance, history of the internet, and many other topics will miss it. To obtain more knowledge one must "know" what knowledge is out there; undiscovered knowledge is unknowable.

And that was Hernando's problem. His solution--well this book will tell you--is to organize the known knowledge of the world (ever increasing in Renaissance times--not to mention coming to light as the method of printing spread to other lands with little known [to Renaissance scholars] languages)by epitomes, summaries, and catalogs of the books that he owned and the knowledge they contained. No, wait there is more--he also collected what his contemporary scholars regarded as "ephemeral trash" (phrase taken from the book cover), i.e. ballads, romances, popular images (popular=of the people), in short whatever was printed or hand-written. In short Hernando anticipated Wikipedia! No, really, he did.

Why the description "shipwrecked books"? Well, a considerable number, thousands, of books Hernando acquired in northern Europe on one trip were being transported to his residence in Spain, but the ship sank, was shipwrecked, and those books lost on the bottom of the sea. All their knowledge lost...and unfortunately like some shipwrecked ships, these books could not be raised from the sea bed. But what about books that did survive to be included in his library? Well, they numbered at least 15,000 by the time he died, but then not all of Hernando's catalogs etc. have survived, so there may well have been more, and of course we need to include the ballads, romances, etc. So if you were to go to Hernando's library, without there being any sort of catalog you could search for the topic "asp" for example, the knowledge about asps contained in some of the volumes would be as lost to you as the knowledge contained in those volumes steadily disintegrating on the sea bed.

W-L's book then is a biography of Hernando, and also of his father Christopher Columbus (though Herando was illegitimate, his father did provide for him and took him on his voyages) whom he loved and revered and defended as the years rolled on. It is cultural history, for Hernando had a position at the Spanish court and was a polymath (as well as an extremely focused bibliophile almost to the point of mania?) He was present at and at times a main "player" in political events on behalf of the Spanish king Charles I of Spain aka Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire--the Charles that sacked Rome in 1527). He was known to the leading thinkers of the time and had personally met quite a number of them.

This book is truly a fascinating work to read (have you ever heard of Hernando? Never mentioned in my classes), but many will find it tedious because it encompasses so much. We must remember that though we may not find a book interesting, or a well-plotted mystery (I don't care for Dorothy Sayers Wimsey mysteries) it does not mean the book is not well-written nor in the case of factual books useful and interesting. Tastes differ, and even differ at different times of our lives (I once did like D. Sayers mysteries). If you have a bent towards polymathy, you may well like this book. If you are interested in the Renaissance or a bibliophile, you may well like this book. Give it a try. And Edward Wilson-Lee, how did you ever organize all the information you gathered so you could use it to write this book so meticulously researched. Thank you for making Hernando known to the world!

PS The book is illustrated with pictures of Hernando's epitomes (including cross-outs) and inter alia, "one of the first great world has made using new mapping techniques, produced by Diogo Ribeiro under the supervision of Hernando in his post as pilot mayor, 1529" see pp. 246-247. Pilot major = the chief navigator of the Casa de Contratacion, or administration of all technical aspects of Spanish shipping, including map making, training of pilots, and certification of all navigational instruments.

PPS Herando anticipated the clock that enabled ships to ascertain their longitude.
...more

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May 13, 2019 Todd Stockslager rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: biography

Review title: Mapping knowledge, indexing the world

Young Columbus here is Hernando, son of Christopher, discoverer of New Worlds and for a brief and shining time Admiral of the Ocean Sea before the realities of exploration and administration of this distant Eden dimmed his bright future and diminished his fame and fortune. Hernando was Columbus's second son, born out of an unwed partnership after his wife died. While elder son Diego ended up inheriting most of Columbus's remaining worldly Review title: Mapping knowledge, indexing the world

Young Columbus here is Hernando, son of Christopher, discoverer of New Worlds and for a brief and shining time Admiral of the Ocean Sea before the realities of exploration and administration of this distant Eden dimmed his bright future and diminished his fame and fortune. Hernando was Columbus's second son, born out of an unwed partnership after his wife died. While elder son Diego ended up inheriting most of Columbus's remaining worldly wealth, Wilson-Lee shows in this brief biography that Hernando inherited his legacy of discovering and mapping new worlds. Only this time, the worlds were words.

Even though born a "natural son" Hernando and his father were close, as the two shared the explorer's fourth voyage to the "Indies", exploring down the coast of Central America as far south as present-day Panama before spending a year stranded by rotting hulls on the north shore of Jamaica. Hernando learned his father's techniques for navigation and observed his approach to dealing with mutiny amongst the anxious stranded ships' crew and colonial administers from nearby Hispaniola who were reluctant to assist and rescue Christopher because he was blamed for the ills of the colonial endeavor. Hernando would eventually make two other trips west, one with his half-brother Diego as Diego assumed colonial administration (just like his father's, it did not end well) and once later in life to rebury his father's remains in the city he founded. But while Hernando would propose a voyage of circumnavigation to discover the true size of the globe (the proposal was turned down by the Spanish government), his most important legacy would be on land.

In 1520 and again a decade later, Hernando Colon (using the Spanish version of his father's surname) made two long trips around Europe buying books, sometimes a thousand or more at a time, in the major printing centers of the time like Venice, Cologne, and Brussels. And while he collected works of recognized importance, he also bought the more ephemeral: pamphlets, prints, broadsides, satires. Unlike contemporary collectors who prized manuscripts in this early age of the printing press, he bought as much as he could of the new printed material. His library may have contained as many as 20,000 volumes at its peak, and he wanted more; as it was, Wilson-Lee says it was one of if not the largest personal library of its time.

Hernando's vision was universal, but collecting such a mass of material revealed problems of organization. How do you find anything, how do you store and organize it for searching , how do you even know what you have so you don't buy duplicates? What Hernando foresaw was the value of the explosion of printed material (for example using his collection to write his father's biography, considered by many historians to be the first research based biography) and what he attempted to create were the first indexes into the library. While we take an alphabetical listing of authors, titles, and subjects as obvious, it is due to Hernando's innovation that the humble card catalog, the paper precursor of Google's search algorithms, came into being. Even the basic bookshelf lining the walls of a room with books displayed upright with spines out (and arranged and accessed by a numbering system linked back to the indexes) was his idea. When the output of one of his book buying trips was lost in a shipwreck on the way to his library, the only record he had of those books was in the catalog, in a volume he named with beautiful simplicity ...."The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books." Without the tools he devised, we would be adrift in a shipwreck of useless data.

While Wilson-Lee uses the tools and format of a traditional biography, telling the story of Hernando's life and his role in the lives of his father and half-brother, the real story is in this intellectual legacy that has transformed the way we view, search, and use information. And though his library never grew to be truly universal in size, the impact of his vision did. ...more

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