Chronicles the life, voyages, and discoveries of Christopher Columbusand other Renaissance explorers.

Relates Columbus' preparations to search for a new route to Asia, describes his four voyages to America, and discusses the exploration of North America, Africa, and India by other explorers.

Profiles the life of the fifteenth-century explorer who opened up the Americas to the Europeans.

The story of how the European search for a new route to the Far East led to the discovery of the "New World" of the American continent.

Provides twenty-two step-by-step projects to help readers learn about the explorers that discovered America and their voyages.

Generalihistory of North America.

An NCSS Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People Christopher Columbus is one of the most famous people in world history, yet few know the full story of the amazing, resourceful, and tragic Italian explorer. Christopher Columbus and the Age of Exploration for Kids portrays the "Admiral of the Ocean Seas" neither as hero nor heel but as a flawed and complex man whose significance is undeniably monumental. Kids will gain a fuller picture of the seafarer's life, his impact, and the dangers and thrills of exploration as they learn about all four of Columbus's voyages to the New World, not just his first, as well as the year that Columbus spent stranded on the island of Jamaica without hope of rescue. Students, parents, and teachers will appreciate the in-depth discussions of the indigenous peoples of the New World and of the consequences of Columbus's voyages—the exchange of diseases, ideas, crops, and populations between the New World and the Old. Fun hands-on activities illuminate both the nautical concepts introduced and the times in which Columbus lived. Kids can: Tie nautical knots Conduct a blanket (silent) trade Make a compass Simulate a hurricane Take nautical measurements And much more

This impeccably researched and “adventure-packed” (The Washington Post) account of the obsessive quest by Christopher Columbus’s son to create the greatest library in the world is “the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters” (NPR) and offers a vivid picture of Europe on the verge of becoming modern. At the peak of the Age of Exploration, Hernando Colón sailed with his father Christopher Columbus on his final voyage to the New World, a journey that ended in disaster, bloody mutiny, and shipwreck. After Columbus’s death in 1506, eighteen-year-old Hernando sought to continue—and surpass—his father’s campaign to explore the boundaries of the known world by building a library that would collect everything ever printed: a vast holding organized by summaries and catalogues; really, the first ever database for the exploding diversity of written matter as the printing press proliferated across Europe. Hernando traveled extensively and obsessively amassed his collection based on the groundbreaking conviction that a library of universal knowledge should include “all books, in all languages and on all subjects,” even material often dismissed: ballads, erotica, news pamphlets, almanacs, popular images, romances, fables. The loss of part of his collection to another maritime disaster in 1522, set off the final scramble to complete this sublime project, a race against time to realize a vision of near-impossible perfection. “Magnificent…a thrill on almost every page” (The New York Times Book Review), The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books is a window into sixteenth-century Europe’s information revolution, and a reflection of the passion and intrigues that lie beneath our own insatiable desires to bring order to the world today.

Was Christopher Columbus a visionary or an opportunist, a rapacious colonist or a Christian mystic? The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Mapmakers gives us a truly judicious portrait of the great navigator--one that is as much about the accretion of the Columbus mythos as it is an absorbing account of his life and character.