Christopher Columbus. (by Gianni Granzotto)

• 1986 First Great Britain Edition.  300 pages
• Published by Book Club Associates  /  Guild Publishing London.
• Hardcover with dust jacket.  Tan boards.  Format C
• Very good condition.  Minor shelf/age wear.

The Dream and the Obsesion.  A Biography.  Illustrated and Indexed.  Translated by Stephen Sartarelli.

Christopher Columbus was a visionary, driven by a burning ambition that was both his greatness and his undoing.  Since the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Europe had been cut off from the East and its gold and precious spices;  Columbus determined to lay claim once more to these treasures and bring back wealth and glory to Spain.

He was convinced he could reach the East by sailing west, but it was years before the sceptical Ferdinand and Isabella were persuaded, by the sheer strength of his passionate conviction, to support the scheme.  Finally he set sail across the Atlantic in a flotilla of three small caravels.

Granzotto has cut through the centuries of conflicting evidence about this complex, shadowy and monomaniacal figure to give us a lively portrait of the man and an absorbing account of his life.  The book is based on meticulous historical research, yet reads like the great adventure story that in fact it was.