Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem How Religion Drove the Voyages that Led to America

Now in paperback from scholar Carol Delaney: "a welcome reappraisal of Columbus and his legacy" ( Kirkus Reviews).The dominant understanding of Christopher Columbus holds him responsible for almost everything that went wrong in the New World. Here, finally, is a book that will radically change our interpretation of the man and his mission. Carol Delaney claims that the true motivation for Columbus's voyages is very different from what is commonly accepted. Rather than an avaricious glory hunter, Delaney reveals Columbus as a man of deep passion, patience, and religious conviction: He believed that he was destined to play a decisive role in the retaking of Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire. Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem recounts the drama of the four voyages, bringing the trials of ocean navigation vividly to life and showing Columbus for the master navigator that he was. Putting Columbus back into the context of his times, rather than viewing him through the prism of present-day perspectives on colonial conquests, Delaney shows him to have been neither a greedy imperialist nor a quixotic adventurer, as he has lately been depicted, but a man driven by an abiding religious passion.

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 is now an emerita professor, Stanford University, and a research scholar at Brown University.