num_pages: 380
description: An uncompromising study of the fictions the failures and the real man behind the myth of Magellan.With Straits  celebrated historian Felipe Fernndez-Armesto subjects the surviving sources to the most meticulous scrutiny ever providing a timely and engrossing biography of the real Ferdinand Magellan. The truth that Fernndez-Armesto uncovers about Magellans life his character and the events of his ill-fated voyage offers up a stranger darker and even more compelling narrative than the fictional version that has been celebrated for half a millennium.Magellan did not attemptmuch less accomplisha journey around the globe. In his lifetime he was abhorred as a traitor reviled as a tyrant self-condemned to destruction and dismissed as a failure. Straits untangles the myths that made Magellan a hero and discloses the reality of the man probing the passions and tensions that drove him to adventure and drew him to disaster. We see the mutations of his pride that became arrogance daring that became recklessness determination that became ruthlessness romanticism that became irresponsibility and superficial piety that became in adversity irrational exaltation. As the real Magellan emerges so do his real ambitions focused less on circumnavigating the world or cornering the global spice market than on exploiting Filipino gold. Straits is a study in failure and the paradox of Magellans career showing that renown is not always a reflection of merit but often a gift and accident of circumstance.
language: English
title: Straits: Beyond the Myth of Magellan
publisher: University of California Press