The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher Columbus, His Son, and the Quest to Build the World's Greatest Library

Written by Edward Wilson-Lee

Narrated by Richard Trinder

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 an essential entry in maritime history and the literature of historical shipwrecks. It’s 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Mar 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781508280484

Edward Wilson-Lee

Having grown up in Kenya and Switzerland, with periods living in Mexico, Zimbabwe, and the United States, Edward Wilson-Lee now lives in Cambridge, where he teaches Renaissance literature and is a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College.

Reviews for The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books

[ulysses775 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A fascinating book that includes the biography of Christopher Columbus, the biography of Hernando (Ferdinand) Columbus, and the biography of a great library. The book gives the political and cultural context for the age of exploration and the changes that took place in Europe through the impact on Ferdinand, Christopher's son. The story of the library is fascinating as Ferdinand was centuries ahead of his time. Though the book is both history and biography, it is really a book for book lovers

[Desander Más · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent book about Columbus‘ second son and the incredible library he created and its significant contribution to knowledge today. Very well read. I would have liked to know however, more about Hernando’s personal life.

[Rara Sh · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An Excellent book for anyone who is interested in Columbus the great saler and what has happened to him and his family after his death, really an amazing story to see what happened to his family especially his Illegitimate son Fernando from his mistress Beatriz De Arana,you will be surprised that unlucky his family like him doesn't enjoy any of the great fame or wealth or even reputation that they should gain from the unprecedented and the most important discovery that their father had done.