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Amerike: the Briton Who Gave America Its Name

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After reading Rodney Broome's AMERIKE I am able to comment as follows:
Everyone who reads this marvelous book should correct the five centuries of misinformation surrounding Columbus by telling one's friends that he actually knew the English had primacy of discovery. I now choose not to revere Columbus, on October 12, but rather Vespucci and the two Medici brothers Lorenzo and Giovanni. These three made the effort to get that 1507 map constructed, while in so doing they tricked the Spanish into informing the civilized world of the Cabot tragedy. I conjecture that Wilhelmus Islond knew or actually was the guide that led the Basques in 1470 to Newfoundland; that Johan Day was Catalan and acquired his Valencia property by inheritance, and accompanied Columbus (Catalan name Cristobal Colom) in the 1477 fishing trip north of Iceland; that Hojeda discovered Cabot and crew in ancient Maracaibo--if that's the name--on the bay called Maracaibo, so kidnapped Cabot's Native American translator, the so-called young girl, because she was a person of interest (the Spanish had no need to mention hapless women forced onto their ships). This book, however, is careful about making conjectures. With great hesitation one must mention one or two errors: Edward IV somehow became "VI"; the biographer Las Casas is somehow made to take his subject Admiral Columbus to be Cabot instead; Coquibacoa got a hundred miles or so to the east from the Guajira Penninsula where it belongs; not to mention other errors, also minor. Let us cheer Broome for getting this remarkable subject into our hands.