Author(s): Edward Wilson-Lee

American

At the Peak of the Age of Exploration, thirteen-year-old Hernando Colón, the illegitimate son of Christopher Columbus, sailed with his father on his fourth and final voyage to the New World, a journey that ended disastrously in bloody mutiny and shipwreck. After his father's death, Hernando sought to continue-and surpass-Columbus's project to encompass the globe by building a library that collected everything ever printed and much that was not: a vast holding organized by summaries and catalogues, the first-ever search engine for the exploding diversity of written matter as the printing press proliferated across Europe. Hernando traveled extensively and obsessively, amassing his collection based on the groundbreaking conviction that a library of universal knowledge should include "all books, in all languages and on all subjects," a vision of near-impossible perfection. The astonishing story of Hernando's life is a window into sixteenth-century Europe's information revolution, a blueprint for the grand designs of future libraries, and a reflection of the passion and intrigues that lie beneath our own insatiable desires to gather, preserve, and bring order to the world today. Book jacket.