
The Four Voyages
1493 · 320 pages
Columbus wrote it all down, and the wonder and the greed are inseparable from the start: islands more beautiful than anything he has seen, and people he judges would make good servants.
★ 5.8

Columbus wrote it all down, and the wonder and the greed are inseparable from the start: islands more beautiful than anything he has seen, and people he judges would make good servants.

The monster ramming ships proves to be an electric submarine whose captain has renounced every nation above. Submarine builders read it as boys, and the first nuclear boat took the Nautilus name.

The obstacle to discovery was never ignorance but the illusion of knowledge, Boorstin argues, then walks through the clock, the compass and the microscope as victories over what everyone was certain of.