COLUMBUS RESOURCES
The disinformation spread about Christopher Columbus is pervasive and has tainted most discussions about him and his legacy. Education on the reality of Columbus and his journeys is key!
WEB LINKS
The National Columbus Education Foundation
"Do you really KNOW Columbus? Chances are, you are familiar with his story but, like many people, you might have been fed false information about the famed explorer. The National Columbus Education Foundation (NCEF) is here to spread the truth about Columbus via public education, advocacy efforts, and more, all with the overall goal of preserving Columbus Day and other recognitions honoring Columbus’ contribution to world history."
The Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations: The Columbus Project
"Prevailing narratives have turned one side into victims, and the other side into villains. Would you be surprised to learn that thousands of enslaved Africans were owned by Native Americans, or that Columbus — who never owned a slave and adopted a Taino boy as his son — became an American icon starting in 1892 after 11 Italians were murdered in New Orleans? Too few know the full story, which is why it’s time to break the cycle, come together and speak the facts."
The Italian American Heritage Project (IAHP) provides educational resources about Italian American history, heritage, and culture with a straightforward view on the roles of Italians in American history and culture.
RESOURCES & ARTICLES
Yale Says Its Vinland Map, Once Called a Medieval Treasure, Is Fake
​
“The Vinland Map is a fake,” Raymond Clemens, the curator of early books and manuscripts at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale, said in a statement this month. “There is no reasonable doubt here. This new analysis should put the matter to rest.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
​
No gamble in history has been more momentous than the landfall of Columbus's ship the Santa Maria in the Americas in 1492 - an event that paved the way for the conquest of a 'New World'. The accounts collected here provide a vivid narrative of his voyages throughout the Caribbean and finally to the mainland of Central America, although he still believed he had reached Asia. Columbus himself is revealed as a fascinating and contradictory figure, fluctuating from awed enthusiasm to paranoia and eccentric geographical speculation. Prey to petty quarrels with his officers, his pious desire to bring Christian civilization to 'savages' matched by his rapacity for gold, Columbus was nonetheless an explorer and seaman of staggering vision and achievement.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
​
In recent years, the enemies of Christopher Columbus have succeeded in damaging, if not demolishing, his historical reputation. Today, Columbus is seen not as a hero but as an inept sailor turned brutal conqueror, and his voyage is taught as the opening assault in a genocidal campaign by cruel imperialists bent on exterminating the peaceful natives who inhabited an idyllic wilderness in harmony with the environment. In this highly controversial book, Thomas Bowden challenges all of these assumptions. As he says in his introductory comments, "The real victim of the incessant attacks on Christopher Columbus is Western civilization itself."
The Book of Prophecies (Repertorium Columbianum) by Christopher Columbus
​
In recent years, the enemies of Christopher Columbus have succeeded in damaging, if not demolishing, his historical reputation. Today, Columbus is seen not as a hero but as an inept sailor turned brutal conqueror, and his voyage is taught as the opening assault in a genocidal campaign by cruel imperialists bent on exterminating the peaceful natives who inhabited an idyllic wilderness in harmony with the environment. In this highly controversial book, Thomas Bowden challenges all of these assumptions. As he says in his introductory comments, "The real victim of the incessant attacks on Christopher Columbus is Western civilization itself."
​
The Diario of Christopher Columbus's First Voyage to America, 1492–1493
​
As the Quincentennial Celebration of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America approaches, interest in the voyage, and in the questions surrounding it, continues to grow. This definitive edition of Columbus’s account of the voyage presents the most accurate printed version of his journal available to date. Unfortunately both Columbus’s original manuscript, presented to Ferdinand and Isabella along with other evidence of his discoveries, and a single complete copy have been lost for centuries. The primary surviving record of the voyage–part quotation, part summary of the complete copy–is a transcription made by Bartolomé de las Casas in the 1530s.
This new edition of the Las Casas manuscript presents its entire contents–including notes, insertions, and canceled text–more accurately, completely, and graphically than any other Spanish text published so far. In addition, the new translation, which strives for readability and accuracy, appears on pages facing the Spanish, encouraging on-the- spot comparisons of the translation with the original. Study of the work is further facilitated by extensive notes, documenting differences between the editors’ transcription and translation and those of other transcribers and translators and summarizing current research and debates on unanswered current research and debates on unanswered questions concerning the voyage. In addition to being the only edition in which Spanish and English are presented side by side, this edition includes the only concordance ever prepared for the Diario.
Awaited by scholars, this new edition will help reduce the guesswork that has long plagued the study of Columbus’s voyage. It may shed light on a number of issues related to Columbus’s navigational methods and the identity of his landing places, issues whose resolution depend, at least in part, on an accurate transcription of the Diario. Containing day-by-day accounts of the voyage and the first sighting of land, of the first encounters with the native populations and the first appraisals of his islands explored, and of a suspenseful return voyage to Spain, the Diario provides a fascinating and useful account to historians, geographers, anthropologists, sailors, students, and anyone else interested in the discovery–or in a very good sea story.
​
The Life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus: by his son Ferdinand
​
"The cornerstone of the history of the American continent." --Washington Irving This revised edition (originally published in 1959) of the famous biography of Columbus by his son Ferdinand was published to coincide with the Columbus quincentenary celebrations. Benjamin Keen's introduction traces the changing assessments of Columbus and his Discovery over almost five centuries, as reflected in the writings of historians, other social scientists, novelists, and poets, and shows how these assessments were influenced by varying political, social, and intellectual conditions. Keen has also revised his translation and notes to reflect new information and viewpoints. Ferdinand's book is a moving and personal document. Provoked in part by the Spanish Crown's attempts to diminish Columbus's role as discoverer, it reveals the restrained emotions of a loving son jealous of his father's honor. Ferdinand had access to all of his father's papers. At the age of thirteen, he accompanied Columbus on the last voyage and participated in many of the events he relates here. The narrative has the irrestible excitement of an adventure story: shipwreck, storms, and battles with mutineers or Indians. Ferdinand's imaginative insight into the many-faceted personality of the discoverer and his artistry with words make this biography, as Henry Vignaud has said, "the most important of our sources of information on the life of the discoverer of America." Benjamin Keen is Professor Emeritus of Latin American history at Northern Illinois University. He is the author of The Aztec Image in Western Thought (Rutgers University Press) and many other books.
​
Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States has sold more than 2.5 million copies. It is pushed by Hollywood celebrities, defended by university professors who know better, and assigned in high school and college classrooms to teach students that American history is nothing more than a litany of oppression, slavery, and exploitation.
​
Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem: How Religion Drove the Voyages that Led to America by Carol Delaney
Christopher Columbus is reevaluated as a man of deep passion, patience, and religious conviction—on a mission to save Jerusalem from Islam.
Five hundred years after he set sail, Columbus is still a controversial figure in history. Debates portray him either as the hero in the great drama of discovery or as an avaricious glory hunter and ruthless destroyer of indigenous cultures. In Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem, Carol Delaney offers a radically new interpretation of the man and his mission, claiming that the true motivation for his voyages is still widely unknown.
Delaney argues that Columbus was inspired to find a western route to the Orient not only to obtain vast sums of gold for the Spanish Crown but primarily to fund a new crusade to take Jerusalem from the Muslims before the end of the world—a goal that sustained him until the day he died. Drawing from oft-ignored sources, some from Columbus’s own hand, Delaney depicts her subject as a thoughtful interpreter of the native cultures that he and his men encountered, and tells the tragic story of how his initial attempts to establish good relations with the natives turned badly sour. Showing Columbus in the context of his times rather than through the prism of present-day perspectives on colonial conquests reveals a man who was neither a greedy imperialist nor a quixotic adventurer, but a man driven by an abiding religious passion. Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem is not an apologist’s take, but a clear-eyed, thought-provoking, and timely reappraisal of the man and his legacy.
​
Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus by Admiral Samuel Elliot Morrison
​
Telling the story of the greatest sailor of them all, "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" is a vivid and definitive biography of Columbus that details all of his voyages that, for better or worse, changed the world. 50 drawings, maps & charts; 4 fold-outs.
​
​
"Anti-Columbus Day activists are using Christopher Columbus as an excuse to demonize American history in general, trusting that most people know little or nothing about Columbus.” This theory by the author was proven right last year, as his first book "Christopher Columbus The Hero" was been publish. What started as a protest of Columbus Day and statues of Columbus, around August 2017, developed into protests against American heroes like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and others, in addition of claims of racism in our American Anthem, culminating with violence and death in Charlottesville, Virginia. To revisionists, Christopher Columbus is responsible for all these, because, in their view, he is the one who brought slavery, racism, and misery to the New World. The question is, are these allegations true? In this book, the author disproves the lies and propaganda against Christopher Columbus and the American heroes revisionists attacked last year. The author shows the reader how their tactics are similar to those they use against Columbus and his legacy. Though activists have not yet been successful in persuading many people against American history and its heroes, they have been successful in renaming Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples' Day in many states and cities, to the disrespect of the Italian-American community who lobbied for the Hero's holiday. Note- This book was originally published in 2018. This version is the 2020 Second Edition.
​
​
In America we worship Christ, we celebrate Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. We have churches and other Christian organizations, but most people are unaware of how Christianity reached America and who introduced it. Most believers don’t know they owed their faith to Columbus, a man chosen by God for such a task. Though most people know Columbus was searching for a new route to the Indies for trade, most people don’t know he was a pious man who wanted to spread Christianity in places that had never heard the gospel. This is the reason why today he is being slandered by groups and individuals who hate Christianity. If Christ was hated and slandered, then no wonder the man who also divided history in two, and carried his name (Christ-opher) is being slandered, while his holiday (Columbus Day) is unfairly renamed or eliminated in many places in the USA over false claims. In his third book, author Rafael Ortiz brings a unique perspective full of stories of evangelization that have been forgotten or most people don’t know. Stories of pre-Columbian Indigenous prophecies, predicting the coming of Christianity. Stories of salvation, miracles, signs, wonders, tragedy, and justice. Stories that that will appeal to believers everywhere. This book was exclusively written with believers in mind and it will help Christians to gain new knowledge and appreciation for one of the most influential men in Christianity and history: Cristoforo Colombo, better known as Christopher Columbus. Note- This book was originally published in 2018. This version is the 2020 Second Edition.
​
Christopher Columbus The Hero: Defending Columbus From Modern Day Revisionism by Raphael Ortiz
​
"Once upon a time, Columbus was a hero...Sadly, that’s not the case today: Some people don't even know who he was, or what he did; while others claim he was a villain, and are advocating for the abolition of Columbus Day and everything he represented. Accusations vary from Columbus being a racist, a rapist, a genocidal maniac, and even that he ran a child sex slave ring. The question is, are these allegations true? And, where are the scholars correcting Columbus’ record? Unfortunately, some of the misinformation out there comes from “scholars;” and even those who defend Columbus, won't address the actual story either. In this book, the reader will learn who modern history revisionists claim Columbus was, and what he did, vs. the actual historical accounts, coming from the mouths of those who knew him well, and wrote about them for us. The conclusion will be inevitable, that is, Columbus was a Hero, and his story and legacy need to be rediscovered again today. Note: This version is the Revised and Updated 2020 Edition from the 2017 Original."
​
Christopher Columbus: The Grand Design by Paolo Emilio Taviani
​