The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books

Christopher Columbus, His Son, and the Quest to Build the World's Greatest Library

By: Edward Wilson-Lee

Narrated by: Richard Trinder

Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins

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.

©2019 Edward Wilson-Lee (P)2019 Simon & Schuster

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

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.

This story is about Hernando Colon.

This story is actual history, not a historical novel. History builds consumer comprehension and discernment.

Truly interesting!

What a wonderful book. I learned so many things. Narration was ok, a bit robotic and a few annoying pronunciations.

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.

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.

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.