Noonsite Book Of The Month: Dreaming Of Columbus

Created by doina. Last modified on 2006-12-11 11:11:46
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DREAMING OF COLUMBUS by Michael L. Frankel

Published 2006 by www.lulu.com

ISBN 978-1-84728-524-9

In 1992 Michael Frankel crossed the Atlantic from the USA to Europe in his 30 foot junk-rigged Sabra to take part in the celebrations marking the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the New World. As part of those celebrations, a sailing rally that followed the route taken by the great navigator set off from Spain. The boats called at Madeira and the Canary Islands before crossing the Atlantic to the island of San Salvador in the Bahamas where Columbus had made his historic landfall five hundred years previously. Michael Frankel’s narrative uses this America 500 rally as the backdrop to his thoughts on Columbus and his own adventures sailing along that historic route. However, most of the book is dedicated to descriptions of the interesting people he met and the many new friends he made during that eventful year. The book is peppered with countless incidents, most of them amusing but also a few serious ones, such as his own dismasting halfway across the Atlantic. With 138 boats sailing in the rally, there was plenty of material to inspire an acute observer and the author mines this rich lode to its full potential.

The Columbus anniversary caused controversy in certain circles, especially in the US, where some people condemned Columbus for most of the ills of the ruthless colonisation that followed his arrival. The author deals objectively with some aspects of that heated debate and expresses his own doubts, but stresses that in spite of everything else that followed, Columbus should be remembered primarily for his feats as an extraordinary navigator. Michael Frankel is not shy to broach yet another controversy, namely that Columbus was by no means the first navigator to successfully cross the Atlantic. Indeed, it is now generally accepted that Vikings had preceded Columbus by several hundred years. However, the recent theory that a Chinese fleet reached almost every corner of the world in 1421, including America, Australia as well as Antarctica, Michael Frankel appears to give credence to in an appendix dealing with the actual “discoverers” of America. This theory has been discredited by all experts in the history of exploration and it is so far fetched that it doesn’t fit into this otherwise excellently written and researched book.

For anyone considering joining a sailing rally, such as the ARC, Michael Frankel’s book is an excellent introduction to such organized events as he openly discusses their advantages and disadvantages. He enjoyed the experience of America 500 so much that a few years later he joined a similar event that circumnavigated the world to mark the start of the new millennium. A book about his adventures in the Millennium Odyssey is promised to follow under the title “Endless Summer”.

“Dreaming of Columbus” was published by the author with the help of an internet based publisher www.lulu.com , from where the book can be ordered directly (ID 376039). It is also available at www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com and www.borders.com. Highly recommended!