Biographer & Historian

 
News and Updates 1
About Laurence Bergreen 2
Contacts and Inquiries 3
Titles  
Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu 4
Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe 7
Voyage to Mars: NASA’s Search for Life Beyond Earth 10
Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life 13
Capone: The Man and the Era 15
As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin 16
James Agee: A Life 17
Look Now, Pay Later: The Rise of Network Broadcasting 18

Laurence Bergreen is currently at work on a book about the four voyages of Christopher Columbus.


Bergreen_NASA

Upcoming Events

Marco Polo Lecture
August 2, 2010
The Mount (Edith Wharton Estate)
Lenox, MA

Master Class – Writing History with a Dramatic Structure
September 10, 2010
Douro Film Harvest Festival (Portuguese) (English)
Douro Valley, Portugal

Magellan Lecture
September 26, 2010
Princeton University Library
Princeton, NJ


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.


Latest Publication

Marco 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.
Vintage (Random House) Page
Amazon.com Page
Kindle Book Page (Amazon Reader)

"A book as rollicking as a travel journal."
– New York Times Book Review

Marco Polo ranks #3 among "greatest adventure bios ever written".
– Outside Magazine, November 2009
Download PDF


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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