Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a trading route to China, and his unexpected landfall in the Americas, is a watershed event in world history. Yet Columbus made three more voyages within the span of only a decade, each designed to demonstrate that he could sail to China within a matter of weeks and convert those he found there to Christianity. These later voyages were even more adventurous, violent, and ambiguous,...

Reveals how the voyages of Columbus reintroduced plants and animals that had been separated millions of years earlier, documenting how the ensuing exchange of flora and fauna between Eurasia and the Americas fostered a European rise, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and made Mexico City the center of the world. [From publisher's description]

"On the fiftieth anniversary of the first lunar landing, acclaimed historian Douglas Brinkley takes a fresh look at the American space program, President John F. Kennedy's inspiring challenge, and the race to the moon. Just months after being elected President of the United States, John F. Kennedy made an astonishing announcement to the nation: we would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. In this engrossing epic of contemporary history,...