‘Simon Park tells the dark, twisted, sometimes terrifying story behind the pageant we think we know: how Europeans went out to meet the world, ‘discover’ it and make their empires. He tells a story of lovers and cannibals, shipwrecks and mutinies and ruinous failures from a wide-angle view and a continent’s worth of sources. His immaculate scholarship puts the risk and the blood back into what sometimes seems just a lifeless parade, the human story of discovery’
Michael Pye, author of The Edge of the World
An excellent account of voyages in the Age of Discovery, focussing on the complex reality in which shipwreck and disaster were as frequent as successful landfall. Superbly written, entertaining and compelling, this book should be read by anyone interested in this pivotal period in history