Laurence Bergreen is currently at work on a book about the four voyages of Christopher Columbus. |
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Upcoming EventsMarco Polo Lecture Master Class – Writing History with a Dramatic Structure Magellan Lecture |
Recent Events
NASA's 50th Anniversary
Bergreen recently served as keynote speaker at NASA's 50th anniversary celebration in Washington, DC. Watch the speech on YouTube.
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Latest PublicationMarco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu, hardcover now in its 3rd printing. The Vintage trade paperback edition of Marco Polo was published in the US on October 21, 2008. "A book as rollicking as a travel journal." Marco Polo ranks #3 among "greatest adventure bios ever written". |
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Marco Polo is Bestseller in IndonesiaBahasa translation of Marco Polo being displayed in an Indonesian bookstore. |
Bergreen Names Mars
(Click Image to Enlarge)
A Note from the Author:
"In 2006, the scientist Steve Squyres of Cornell University and NASA was deep in an extended mission for the Mars rover known as Opportunity. This interplanetary tractor had already survived far longer than expected in the harsh Martian environment of dust storms and subzero temperatures. Like the proverbial Timex watch, it had taken a lickin' and kept on tickin'. Now Squyres wanted to drive this hardy rover around and eventually into the crater named Victoria, after the sole of ship of Magellan's fleet to complete the first-ever circumnavigation of the globe. The plan was not without risks. It could wind up falling off a steep cliff, or buried in a sandstorm, or simply lose power and expire. Nevertheless, Steve and his dedicated team at NASA were all for exploring the Red Planet as long as Opportunity functioned.
Because I'd written Over the Edge of World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe, which was published in 2003, as well as an earlier book about NASA's exploration of the Red Planet, Voyage to Mars (2000), Steve asked me to contribute names for features discovered on Mars by Opportunity after those discovered by Magellan his circumnavigation. And so I did. Since then, places discovered in and around Victoria crater such as Duck Bay and many others derive from features in South America and the Pacific that Magellan visited almost five hundred years earlier. So NASA affirmed that the spirit of exploration and discovery is alive and well in our own day, as it extends from earth to Mars and beyond."
The result can be followed on maps of Mars (as pictured above), produced by NASA.
Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe
Bergreen's 7th book, about the first circumnavigation of the globe, is now in its 23rd printing.
Learn more about the book.
