Unavailable
Unavailable
Unavailable
Ebook436 pages8 hours
1492: The Year the World Began
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
1492: The Year the World Began is a look at one of the most fascinating years in world history, the year when many believe the modern world was born. Historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, author of Millennium, covers such iconic figures as Christopher Columbus and Alexander Borgia and explores cultures as diverse as that of Spain, China, and Africa to tell the story of 1492, a momentous year whose lessons are still relevant today
Unavailable
Author
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto is William P. Reynolds Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, USA. Some of his recent publications include 1492: The Year Our World Began (2011), Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration (2006) and The Conquistadors: A Very Short Introduction (2011).
Read more from Felipe Fernandez Armesto
1492: The Year the Four Corners of the Earth Collided Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Civilizations: Culture, Ambition, and the Transformation of Nature Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Out of Our Minds: What We Think and How We Came to Think It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Straits: Beyond the Myth of Magellan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to 1492
Related ebooks
The History of the World in Bite-Sized Chunks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anabasis (The Persian Expedition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lost Paradise: The Story of Granada Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Rise and Fall of the British Empire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A History of Holland Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPrisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rethinking Atlantic Empire: Christopher Schmidt-Nowara’s Histories of Nineteenth-Century Spain and the Antilles Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The House Of Medici: Its Rise and Fall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bartolomé de las Casas and the Defense of Amerindian Rights: A Brief History with Documents Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEmpires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed: Revised and Updated Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Communist Manifesto (with an Introduction by Algernon Lee) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5America in European Consciousness, 1493-1750 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Little Book of Big History: The Story of the Universe, Human Civilization, and Everything in Between Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe History of Europe in Bite-sized Chunks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Vanished World: Medieval Spain's Golden Age of Enlightenment Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe - Updated Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Native Brazil: Beyond the Convert and the Cannibal, 1500-1900 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World—and Globalization Began Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Inca Account of the Conquest of Peru Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
History For You
100 Things You're Not Supposed to Know: Secrets, Conspiracies, Cover Ups, and Absurdities Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Richest Man in Babylon: The most inspiring book on wealth ever written Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters--And How to Get It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wise as Fu*k: Simple Truths to Guide You Through the Sh*tstorms of Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Lessons of History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Awakening: Defeating the Globalists and Launching the Next Great Renaissance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Whore Stories: A Revealing History of the World's Oldest Profession Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Summary of The War of Art: by Steven Pressfield | Includes Analysis Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Reset: And the War for the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unveiled: How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Power of Geography: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Secret History of the World Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Huckleberry Finn Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England: 400 – 1066 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for 1492
Rating: 3.724489861224489 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
49 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Dr. F-A has a curious program in this book. He seeks to give us a picture, a snap-shot of a very fluid system, to wit, our understanding of the past, as we have drawn it from written, and archaeological evidence, but reveals in his Epilogue that he believes that history has no course. But the point of such a snap-shot approach is to draw parallels, especially as his chapter on the community of the Indian ocean. I found this information very valuable when relating it to the scale of European-Mediterranean commerce. He seems to have found patterns in his denial that such patterns can be found. We are also treated to a close study of the state of the mind, and of the technology of Christopher Columbus, and some information relating to the lapse in exploration by non-European societies in the generation preceding Columbus. The book, promising a unity of vision, seems disjoined, but has some interesting essays dealing with the effects of the Expulsion of the Jews from spain, a quick look at exploration of North Eastern Africa in the fifteenth century, and a rare look at the Russian expansion of the period. A book for reading and then examining in the light of more detailed study in the areas covered. The prose is lively.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Engaging high-speed overview of the world (well, the civilised bits, anyway) as it was in 1492, just as the Spanish reached the Americas and the Portuguese moved into the Indian Ocean. Very entertaining and informative.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Overview of the various exploratory and colonialistic movements happening around the world in the period when Columbus was sailing to the New World (though that was neither his intention nor his assumption). While I learned an awful lot from this book, I found it frankly rather disappointing. Part of it was the author's sytax; the book is peppered with sentences and phrases that often struck me as odd and sometimes incomprehensible.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An engrossing, highly readable survey of the state of the world in 1492, when Columbus's (or his overlooked lookout's) discovery of the Americas dramatically changed the global status quo. Fernandez-Armesto, a Professorial Fellow of Queen Mary, University of London, writes with clarity and intellectual rigor (not always an easily managed combination), examining the international situation with the enthusiasm of an ideal explorer.At 321 pages, this book is deceptively lightweight, and minimally footnoted, but the author manages to pack an impressive amount of content between its covers. Over the course of ten chapters, subjects covered include, among others, the fortunes of Islam in Africa, the reign of Ivan III and his massive expansion of Russia, and the complex tensions between Confucian mandarins and the Buddhist-sympathizing Ming dynasty. Some of Fernandez-Armesto's most striking observations are only briefly treated in the text, but provide much room for further thought: for example, his speculation that a decline in the fortunes of the great empire of Mali, during the fifteenth century, may have directly influenced the concurrent decline in the status of black people, evinced in contemporary map illustrations, thus strengthening the justifications for the slave trade (itself already well underway) and constituting a dramatic turning-point in the history of race relations.Occasionally, the author's attempts to provide contemporary pop-culture parallels for historic reference points can feel slightly jarring, but this is rarely an issue and in any case is also a reflection of the book's appealing chattiness and immense enthusiasm for and engagement with its subject. Notwithstanding its light touch, however, this study provides a cogent and intensive analysis of why other parts of the world, for one reason or another, did not take over the Americas -- thus giving the lie to the inevitability of the "rise of the West" -- and what this take-over, five hundred odd years ago, means for the world today.