Prof's Choice

Voyages, celebrations, questions, and bashings.

J.M. COHEN, EDITOR AND TRANSLATOR, TheFour Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Penguin Books, 1992)— A reissue of the 1969 edition, containing all the relevant documents, authoritatively translated.

FELIPE FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO, Columbus on Himself (The Folio Society, 1992)—A reconstruction and new translation of all documents supposed to have been written by the admiral.

WASHINGTON IRVING, History of the Life and Voyages ofChristopher Columbus (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1828)—The "Columbus" of the nineteenth century: romantic and tragic.

SAMUEL ELIOT MORRISON, Admiral of the Ocean Sea (Little, Brown, 1942) The twentieth-century "Columbus": a skillful swashbuckler.

EDMUNDO O'GORMAN, The Inventionof America (Indiana University Press, 1961) A critical inquiry into the source of the idea that Columbus discovered America.

CLAUDIA L. BUSHMAN, America Discovers Columbus (University Press of New England, 1992)—An account of the process by which "Columbus" became a national hero.

KIRKPATRICK SALE, The Conquest of Paradise (Knopf, 1991)—The most strident of recent Columbus-bashings, holding him responsible for all our present ills.