New York: Viking, (2011) dj. Hardcover first edition - Biography of a man who was "brilliant, audacious, volatile, paranoid, narcissistic, ruthless and (in the end) deeply unhappy. Born in Genoa, bred to the sea, Columbus won Spanish royal support for an exploratory voyage in hopes of finding a western passage to Asia. On Oct. 12, 1492, he landed on the Bahamian island of San Salvador, and then took his three ships south to trace the northern coasts of Cuba and Hispaniola. Persuaded that he had found outlying territories of East Asia, Columbus returned in triumph to Spain, where the sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella named him Admiral of the Ocean Sea and granted him sweeping powers over the territories he had claimed. Columbus led three more voyages across the Atlantic, in 1493-96, 1498-1500 and 1502-4. Along the way, he alternately befriended and did battle with the native peoples he called Indians, was twice shipwrecked and contended with a rogues gallery of Spanish rebels and mutineers." Illustrations, extensive notes, selected bibliography, index. xvii, 423 pp. ISBN: 978-0670023011.