'Filled with marvels and sensations rich in description and replete with anecdote ... A compendium of delights'

Peter Ackroyd, The Times

'Fernández-Armesto's chapters on the western Mediterranean are models of how to write popular history: accessible, provocative and full of telling detail' ****

Mail on Sunday

'Fernández-Armesto's rich vision of the 1490s is unlike any other world historians have given us. He has performed an amazing feat of portraying the world as one place before it had yet become one place ... This is popular history at its best: grounded in research, insightfully critical, and written with grace'

Literary Review

'Engrossing'

Daily Telegraph