Columbus: The Four Voyages
By Laurence Bergreen
Hardcover, 448 pages
He's credited with "discovering" America and changing the course of world history. But did you know Christopher Columbus made three more subsequent voyages, each one increasingly ambitious, adventurous and violent? The author, who's also written about Marco Polo, Magellan and NASA's missions to Mars, chronicles the drama and the details of Columbus' nautical career to create a fascinating portrait of an explorer who made his mark in history, all right, but ended up broken in the process, unable to reach China or Japan, and mired political, financial and moral controversy.