Biographer & Historian

 
News and Updates 1
About Laurence Bergreen 2
Contacts and Inquiries 3
Titles  
Columbus: the Four Voyages 4
Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu 5
Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe 8
Voyage to Mars: NASA’s Search for Life Beyond Earth 11
Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life 14
Capone: The Man and the Era 16
As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin 17
James Agee: A Life 18
Look Now, Pay Later: The Rise of Network Broadcasting 19

Columbus: the Four Voyages

Now available from Viking Press, a dramatic new biography of the world's most iconic explorer. Laurence Bergreen’s latest book Columbus: The Four Voyages will change everything you thought you knew about Columbus. In the first major biography of the iconic explorer in more than sixty years, Bergreen shows us the madness and genius that only those who traveled with him could have seen. Covering his four epic voyages, it's the Columbus you didn't learn about in school. Welcome to the voyages of a lifetime.

Upcoming Events and Lectures

2/09/12 University of Mary Washington (Fredericksburg, VA)

Bergreen_NASA

Past Events

Connie Martinson Talks Books
View a video archive of this television broadcast.

Cambridge Forum
Listen to an audio archive of the event held in Cambridge, Massachussetts.

Douro Harvest Film Festival
Watch an interview with Bergreen about his appearance at the Douro Harvest Film Festival last September in Portugal.

NASA's 50th Anniversary
Bergreen recently served as keynote speaker at NASA's 50th anniversary celebration in Washington, DC. Watch the speech on YouTube.

Marco Polo is Bestseller in Indonesia

Bahasa 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.

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