Straits

Resumen del libro

SHORTLISTED FOR THE DUFF COOPER PRIZE 2022A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST HISTORY BOOK OF 2022. 'Rigorous, deft and entertaining ... a sparkling read' - The Spectator'The ride is thrilling ... a work of serious scholarship' - Sunday Telegraph. For centuries, Ferdinand Magellan has been celebrated as a hero: a noble adventurer who circumnavigated the globe in an extraordinary feat of human bravery; a paragon of daring and chivalry.

Now historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto draws on extensive and meticulous research to conduct a dazzling investigation into Magellan's life, his character and his ill-fated voyage. He reveals that Magellan did not attempt - much less accomplish - a journey around the globe, and that in his own lifetime, the explorer was abhorred as a traitor, reviled as a tyrant and dismissed as a failure. Fernandez-Armesto probes the passions and tensions that drove Magellan to adventure and drew him to disaster: the pride that became arrogance, audacity that became recklessness, determination that became ruthlessness, romanticism that became irresponsibility, and superficial piety that became, in adversity, irrational exaltation.

And as the real Magellan emerges, so too do his true ambitions, focused less on circumnavigating the world or cornering the global spice market than on exploiting Filipino gold. Offering up a stranger, darker and even more compelling narrative than the fictional version that has been glorified for half a millennium, Straits untangles the myths that made Magellan a hero.

Biografía del autor

Felipe Fernández-Armesto nació en Londres en 1950 y estudió Historia en la Universidad de Oxford, en cuya Facultad de Historia Moderna desarrolló su carrera profesional de 1981 a 2000, cuando se trasladó a la Universidad de Londres para ocupar la cátedra de Historia Mundial y Medioambiental del Queen Mary College. Ha sido también profesor o conferenciante invitado en otras prestigiosas universidades e instituciones de investigaciones superiores, como el Instituto Holandés de Estudios Avanzados, la Library of Congress, y las universidades de Harvard, Brown, Minnesota, Pennsylvania y Edinburgo, y ha recibido numerosos premios de investigación. Entre su anundante obra, traducida a veintitrés idiomas, destacan Colón (1992), Antes de Colón (1993), Millennium (1995), Civilizaciones (2002) e Historia de la comida (2004). En la actualidad ejerce la cátedra Príncipe de Asturias de Tufts University, Boston, Massachusetts.