Customer Reviews

The Diario of Christopher Columbus's First Voyage to America, 1492-1493 (American Exploration and Travel Series)

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This is the largest fragment of Columbus's first voyage log, as abstracted by Bartolome de Las Casas. Of the many editions in print, Dunn & Kelley stands head and shoulders above the rest. The format has a new Spanish transcription on the left-hand pages, exactly as hand-written in the original manuscript by Las Casas: same abbreviations, strike-outs, diacriticals, and marginal notes. The right-hand pages contain an English translation.

But perhaps the most valuable addition for the scholar is the Spanish concordance of the entire text, giving folio and line numbers for every appearance of almost every word. (Common words such as prepositions are given only with word counts, not references.) All in all, a must-have for any serious scholar or afficianado of the Admiral of the Ocean Sea.

The Diario of Christopher Columbus' First Voyage to America--compilation and translation by Oliver Dunn & James Kelley

This is an excellent reference and also a good read. It is simply the journal of Columbus himself, with the added plus of having the original Spanish on one side and the English translation on the other, and very little commentary. Thus, the reader gets it straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak.

I thought this book offered a first hand look at Christopher Columbus and his true motives. One of my favorites that can't be replaced as folks try to re-write history and describe him negatively.