Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem - by Carol Delaney (Paperback)

About the Book

An assessment of the character and motivations of Christopher Columbus reveals the passionate religious beliefs that motivated his famous voyages, and claims how he sought gold to finance a new crusade to restore Jerusalem to Christian control.

Book Synopsis

"One of the 100 best books of the year." --The Times Literary Supplement

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.

Review Quotes

"""A decidedly different approach to the man who discovered America." -"The New York Post"""

"A brazen attempt to construct a parable for our times." --"Booklist"

"Carol Delaney's "Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem"...elegantly tells a familiar story--with a twist...The result is a revealing new view of Columbus." "Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year"

"A dramatic story with repercussions that could reach the heavens." --"Washington Post"

"A new and provocative interpretation of Columbus. Carol Delaney uses her training as a cultural anthropologist to brilliantly explicate Columbus's strange, apocalyptic world. By being more sensitive to the differentness of the past than most historians, she has written a remarkable work of history, and one that is utterly accessible." -- Gordon S. Wood, author of "The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth fo the United States"

"A welcome reappraisal of Columbus and his legacy." --Kirkus Reviews

"Brilliant. Enlightening. The surprise here is not that a vaunted academic like Delaney has written such a deeply researched take on the Columbus legacy, but that she does so with page-turning style, effortlessly transporting the modern reader into the minds and motivations of 15th-century Europe." -Martin Dugard, author of "The Last Voyage of Columbus"

"Everybody knows the story of Columbus, right? Wrong. For far too long, writers have chosen to ignore one of Columbus's most powerful motivations: religion. In this exhaustively researched and engagingly written account, Carol Delaney reveals the remarkable extent to which Columbus sailed across the Atlantic not just to reach the other side but also to hasten the Christian recapture of Jerusalem -- and help bring about the end of the world. This is a fascinating and important book." - Toby Lester, author of "The Fourth Part of the World"

"This absorbing book adds a new and penetrating chapter to the long history of Jerusalem. But it does so by recapturing some fascinating and critical information about another iconic figure, namely Christopher Columbus who - Delaney makes clear - sailed west, but had Jerusalem on his mind the whole time. Carefully documented and well crafted, the book reads like a superb historical novel. Columbus himself nearly steps off the pages, and when we are finished we know him much better than we have before, including his idiosyncrasies, delusions and uncanny maritime skills." --Harvey Cox, author of "The Future of Faith"

About the Author

Carol Delaney received an MTS from Harvard Divinity School and a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Chicago and is a graduate of Boston University. She was the assistant director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard, and a visiting professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University. She is now a professor emerita at Stanford University and a research scholar at Brown University. Delaney is the author of several books, including The Seed and the Soil: Gender and Cosmology in Turkish Village Society, Abraham on Trial: The Social Legacy of Biblical Myth, Naturalizing Power: Essays in Feminist Cultural Criticism, and Investigating Culture: An Experiential Introduction to Anthropology.