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

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.

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

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.

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.