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The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books
- Christopher Columbus, His Son, and the Quest to Build the World's Greatest Library
- Narrated by: Richard Trinder
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
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Publisher's summary
In the tradition of Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve and Dava Sobel’s Galileo’s Daughter, a vividly rendered account of the forgotten quest by Christopher Columbus’ son to create the greatest library in the world - “a perfectly pitched poetic drama” (Financial Times) and an amazing tour through 16th-century Europe.
The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books tells the story of the first and greatest visionary of the print age, a man who saw how the explosive expansion of knowledge and information generated by the advent of the printing press would entirely change the landscape of thought and society. He also happened to be Christopher Columbus’ illegitimate son.
At the peak of the Age of Exploration, while his father sailed across the ocean to explore the boundaries of the known world, Hernando Colón sought to surpass Columbus’ achievements by building a library that would encompass the world and include “all books, in all languages and on all subjects”. In service of this vision, he spent his life travelling - first to the New World with his father in 1502, surviving through shipwreck and a bloody mutiny off the coast of Jamaica, and later, throughout Europe, scouring the bookstores of the day at the epicenter of printing.
The very model of a Renaissance man, Hernando restlessly and obsessively bought thousands and thousands of books, amassing a collection based on the modern conviction that a truly great library should include the kind of material dismissed as ephemeral trash: ballads, pornography, newsletters, popular images, romances, fables. Using an invented system of hieroglyphs, he meticulously cataloged every item in his library, devising the first ever search engine for his rich profusion of books and images and music. A major setback in 1522 gave way to the creation of Hernando’s catalog of shipwrecked books and inspired further refinements to his library, including a design for the first modern bookshelves.
In this illuminating and brilliantly researched biography, Edward Wilson-Lee tells an enthralling story of the life and times of the first genius of the print age, a tale with striking lessons for our own modern experiences of information revolution and globalization.
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The Renaissance in Florence conjures images of beautiful frescoes and elegant buildings - the dazzling handiwork of the city's skilled artists and architects. But equally important for the centuries to follow were geniuses of a different sort: Florence's manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars, and booksellers, who blew the dust off a thousand years of history and, through the discovery and diffusion of ancient knowledge, imagined a new and enlightened world.
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Great book, Horrible narrator
- By Sergio Remon on 07-01-21
By: Ross King
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The Ornament of the World
- How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain
- By: Maria Rosa Menocal, Harold Bloom - foreword
- Narrated by: Tanya Eby
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Widely hailed as a revelation of a "lost" golden age, this history brings to vivid life the rich and thriving culture of medieval Spain, where, for more than seven centuries, Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in an atmosphere of tolerance, and literature, science, and the arts flourished.
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Excellent Book
- By Zahid Ahmad on 08-14-18
By: Maria Rosa Menocal, and others
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Fifth Sun
- A New History of the Aztecs
- By: Camilla Townsend
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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For the first time, in Fifth Sun, the history of the Aztecs is offered in all its complexity based solely on the texts written by the indigenous people themselves. Camilla Townsend presents an accessible and humanized depiction of these native Mexicans, rather than seeing them as the exotic, bloody figures of European stereotypes.
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Ethnocentric ethnohistory
- By Jeffrey D on 03-24-21
By: Camilla Townsend
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The Writing of the Gods
- The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone
- By: Edward Dolnick
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The Rosetta Stone is one of the most famous objects in the world, attracting millions of visitors to the British museum every year, and yet most people don’t really know what it is. Discovered in a pile of rubble in 1799, this slab of stone proved to be the key to unlocking a lost language that baffled scholars for centuries.
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Hieroglyphs For The People
- By Spike on 01-15-22
By: Edward Dolnick
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Papyrus
- The Invention of Books in the Ancient World
- By: Irene Vallejo, Charlotte Whittle - translator
- Narrated by: Sophie Roberts
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Long before books were mass-produced, scrolls hand-copied on reeds pulled from the Nile were the treasures of the ancient world. Papyrus is the story of the book’s journey from oral tradition to scrolls to codices, and how that transition laid the very foundation of Western culture. Irene Vallejo evokes the great mosaic of literature in the ancient world, all the while illuminating how ancient ideas about education, censorship, authority, and identity still resonate today.
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Great read
- By Hunter Pechin on 12-15-22
By: Irene Vallejo, and others
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Conquistadores
- A New History of Spanish Discovery and Conquest
- By: Fernando Cervantes
- Narrated by: Luis Soto
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the few short decades that followed Christopher Columbus' first landing in the Caribbean in 1492, Spain conquered the two most powerful civilizations of the Americas: the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru. Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, and the other explorers and soldiers who took part in these expeditions dedicated their lives to seeking political and religious glory, helping to build an empire unlike any the world had ever seen. But centuries later, these conquistadors have become the stuff of nightmares.
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A fresh mature perspective on the Spanish conquest
- By Chencheno111 on 03-19-22
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When Montezuma Met Cortes
- The True Story of the Meeting That Changed History
- By: Matthew Restall
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 16 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1519, the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés first met Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, at the entrance to the capital city of Tenochtitlan. This introduction - the prelude to the Spanish seizure of Mexico City and to European colonization of the mainland of the Americas - has long been the symbol of Cortés' bold and brilliant military genius. Montezuma, on the other hand, is remembered as a coward who gave away a vast empire and touched off a wave of colonial invasions across the hemisphere. But is this really what happened?
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Flawed, but worth it for those interested.
- By "J" on 02-16-18
By: Matthew Restall
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The Venetians
- A New History: From Marco Polo to Casanova
- By: Paul Strathern
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 13 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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The Republic of Venice was the first great economic, cultural, and naval power of the modern Western world. After winning the struggle for ascendency in the late 13th century, the Republic enjoyed centuries of unprecedented glory and built a trading empire which at its apogee reached as far afield as China, Syria, and West Africa. This golden period only drew to an end with the Republic's eventual surrender to Napoleon. The Venetians illuminates the character of the Republic during these illustrious years by shining a light on some of the most celebrated personalities of European history.
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Mesmerizing
- By Gary R. Frank on 08-24-15
By: Paul Strathern
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A World Beneath the Sands
- The Golden Age of Egyptology
- By: Toby Wilkinson
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In A World Beneath the Sands, acclaimed Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson chronicles the ruthless race between the British, French, Germans, and Americans to lay claim to its mysteries and treasures. He tells riveting stories of the men and women whose obsession with Egypt’s ancient civilization helped to enrich and transform our understanding of the Nile Valley and its people and left a lasting impression on Egypt, too.
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An entrancing listen, fascinating History
- By L. Ford Ballard, Jr. on 01-27-21
By: Toby Wilkinson
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The Ark Before Noah
- Decoding the Story of the Flood
- By: Irving Finkel
- Narrated by: Irving Finkel, Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Since the Victorian period, it has been understood that the story of Noah, iconic in the Book of Genesis, and a central motif in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, derives from a much older story that existed centuries before in ancient Babylon. But the relationship between the Babylonian and biblical traditions was shrouded in mystery. Then, in 2009, Irving Finkel, a curator at the British Museum and a world authority on ancient Mesopotamia, found himself playing detective.
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excellent, enlightening, entertaining
- By D. Littman on 07-17-14
By: Irving Finkel
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Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely
- By: Andrew S. Curran
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Denis Diderot is often associated with the decades-long battle to bring the world's first comprehensive Encyclopedie into existence. But his most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity - for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century's accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality.
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lifelong coverage of his life.
- By Michael Daly on 03-22-21
By: Andrew S. Curran
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The Buried Book
- The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh
- By: David Damrosch
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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One day in 1872, self-taught Assyriologist George Smith was sifting through a pile of clay tablets when he realized he was reading about "a flood, storm, a ship caught on a mountain, and a bird sent out in search of dry land". This is the riveting story of the discovery of the world's first literary epic, the "Epic of Gilgamesh".
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interesting- but not for everyone
- By J Michael on 07-16-08
By: David Damrosch
What listeners say about The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- anna g.
- 02-21-24
Fascinating, new perspectives, and lots of new information
Beautifully written I loved the feel of the book and the many different perspectives.  I must read for anyone interested in Columbus and in Books
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- David Elliott
- 11-12-22
All That & More
Hernando Colón, the favored tho merely "natural son" of Columbus lived & worked at the power center of a pivotal era: Spain during the Renaissance, with the printing press & in age of exploration & empire.
From accompanying his father to the New World, to crisscrossing Europe in pursuit of recent discoveries & rediscoveries and under royal sponsorship mapping & systematizing the explosion of information his time experienced, this inexhaustible, boot strapping striver discovered new lands & ways via the worlds great (and entirely new) bookshops.
A member of the court of Ferdinand & Issabella's, then of Charles I, (who's mercenaries, annoyed at being unpaid, sacked Rome & the Vatican on the eve of his being crowned Holy Roman Emperor) Hernando's pursuits culminated in attempting to build a library that would have to wait 500 years - & the internet - to become feasible.
A man of, yet living out front of his time & culture, the tale of the hardest working man in Christendom makes besides a lively stage to present the foibles of kings, countries & even cruelties of his time.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Joan
- 05-03-20
This story is about Hernando Colon.
This story is actual history, not a historical novel. History builds consumer comprehension and discernment.
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2 people found this helpful
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- GogolGirl
- 07-30-19
Truly interesting!
What a wonderful book. I learned so many things. Narration was ok, a bit robotic and a few annoying pronunciations.
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2 people found this helpful
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- William Friedheim
- 05-15-22
And we are now back to banning books
So much new information for me. The focus on Hernando's incredible intense and creative thinking about the world of "books" in this awful time of renewed censorship makes his concepts and desires to leave and preserve a collection of everything so very timely.
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2 people found this helpful
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- R. P. RIBEYRE
- 10-26-20
Erudite. Stimulating. Rewarding.
A complex bundle of well researched history, myth, and literature, all combined to yield up a nuanced analysis of the life and character of the historical figure Fernando, son of Christopher Columbus. Surprisingly, the result is a page turner in the vein of old detective tales, thanks in no small part to vivid detail and imagination of the author.
Will appeal to the bibliophile, the historian, and the adventurer at heart reader.
Relevant to New World exploration, Old World Europe, and bibliophilia.
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3 people found this helpful
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- stephanie L razzano
- 06-14-19
Fascinating book
I knew little to nothing about Hernando Columbus before reading this book. Turns out, he was an intellectual genius who created the concept of a universal library which would be easily searchable, thus, foreseeing the development of the modern search engine and who wrote the biography of his father.
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2 people found this helpful