Douglas Hunter, a PhD candidate in the Graduate Program in History published his latest book, The Race to the New World: Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, and a Lost History of Discovery (288 pp.). It was published recently by Palgrave Macmillan both in hardback and as an e-book.
This is how the press describe the volume:
The final decade of the fifteenth century was pivotal in world history. The Genoese mariner Christopher Columbus sailed westward into the Atlantic Ocean in 1492, determined to secure for Spain a more direct route to the riches of the Indies. But as Columbus struggled to capitalize on his momentous discovery of distant landfalls, a troubled Venetian bridge contractor in Spain, on the lam from creditors and remembered as John Cabot, audaciously reinvented himself as an explorer and mounted a rival quest for England. In The Race to the New World, Douglas Hunter tells for the first time the fascinating tale of how their high-stakes race to find a shortcut to staggering wealth threatened the precarious power balance of Europe – and how they found a New World that neither was looking for. Employing fresh research and new translations of critical documents, Hunter reveals the surprisingly intertwined nature of Columbus’s and Cabot’s lives and provides a fresh perspective on the critical first years of the European discovery of the New World.
For further details, see http://us.macmillan.com/theracetothenewworld/DouglasHunter.
Douglas has kindly donated a copy to the Department and it is available in the Chair’s office for anyone who would like to take a browse.
On behalf of the Department, Douglas, many congratulations!