Rating: 
Summary: Exciting to see a quality book on the bestseller list
Review: It is exciting to see a quality book like this one on the bestselle list - who says that reading habits are dumbing down? (OK, there are all those books on the Holy Grail... but THIS book is a good one!) Magellan helped to create the world in which we live today, so it is important to discover the many parts of his fascinating life that this book tells, and, in these uncertain times, heroic tales of brave men like Magellan, movies like Lord of the Rings and Master & Commander, all remind us of the kind of hero we used to have and now can have once more. We need uplifting as well as educating, and this book is an ideal mix of these two things. Buy it and be encouraged and informed. Christopher Catherwood, author of CHRISTIANS MUSLIMS AND ISLAMIC RAGE (Zondervan 2003) and THE BALKANS IN WORLD WAR TWO (Palgrave, 2003)
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Summary: A Terrifying Globe-Trotting Adventure
Review: Laurence Bergreen does a great job of capturing an amazing story from the beginning of the Age of Discovery, that of Magellan's circumnavigation of the world (although, of course, poor Magellan did not survive to finish the journey his Armada begun.) The author, in Over the Edge of the World, covers the entire expedition and gives Magellan a fair shake, both good and bad, in such aspects as his navigation skills, his leadership, his dealings with various tribes, and his use of religion. The main chronicler, but not the sole one, was Pigafetta, a passenger on board, and his voice rings through this book in a useful and fascinating way. An interesting book.
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Summary: great account of one of the legendary journeys
Review: Laurence Bergreen provides a deep look at Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan's sixteenth century quest that led to the first known navigation of the world. This journey is a pivotal point in how Europeans viewed the world as people realized that not only will one not fall off the globe, but that Europe is not the epicenter of the orb. Mr. Bergreen followed the ill-fated journey through what is now the Straits of Magellan at the tip of South America and uses satellite images to further enhance the trek. Of interest to historical buffs is the daily journal that encompasses known research from around the globe. This includes sailor Albo's log and the comments of scholar sailor Pigafetta. The author debunks several modern day myths such as Magellan's mission was not go around the world, but to find a water route to the Spice Islands; and that the voyage was not glorious but brutal and filled with tragedy and misfortunes including the Captain having died in the Philippines. Magellan never made it. The trek took three years with only one ship with eighteen survivors making it back to Spain.This is a great account of one of the legendary journeys of history. Supplemented by maps, inserts, and first hand accounts, readers join on the harrowing trek that proved once and for all that the world is round. No one will feel over the edge with this great look at the "Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe" by Magellan and his crew. Harriet Klausner
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Summary: Age of Discovery Never Better
Review: Laurence Bergreen, several of whose excellent biographies and histories I have enjoyed, has built a superb story of Renaissance politics, Age of Discovery courage, picaresque characters and a range of heroes and villains from the depressing to the sublime. Fiction could never get this unbelievable. The historical detail, the tautness of the text keeps the reader going with eyes opening wider and wider, thinking, who could I have not have known this stuff? From the courts of the Holy Roman Empire to the South American coasts, to Asia, Bergreen brings news of the early sixteenth century that hasn't yet hit the mass media. The secret's out. This one is a sure bet for the movies - the dreams and nightmares of mankind, its loneliness, loyalty, cross-cultural epiphanies, sex, violence and the inexorable quest for something grander than itself.
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Summary: Fantastic story; in need of a proofreader
Review: Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe is a truly amazing story. If a screenwriter came up with all these misadventures for an imaginary explorer, from mutinies to shipwrecks and through to disastrous first encounters with non-european peoples, the story would be rejected as too unbelievably eventful for just one journey. Bergreen's tangents on related subjects of interest make the book even more interesting, as we learn about everything from the Chinese Treasure Fleet that first established trade with the Philippines, to how Shakespeare's Caliban was inspired by a Patagonian native. There's really only one problem: a good proofreader needed one more pass at editing this book before publication to avoid the occasional impenetrable paragraph. In one passage for instance, we're told that Behaim's globe "which Magellan had displayed to King Charles" is assumed to have inspired the search for a strait. Later, in the same paragraph, we learn it is "unlikely that Magellan ever saw the Behaim Globe" Huh? Did the author mean that the globe was only assumed to have been shown by Magellan to King Charles? Then why didn't he say so? In other instances, we're given no information to place a newly offered name, or the explanations of key concepts, like the Papal line of demarcation, seem incomplete. A map of the Magellan Strait would also have been more helpful than the cloud covered aerial photograph from Nasa.
Rating:
Summary: detailed, vivid, interestingly digressive
Review: Mention Magellan and most will tell you he's that guy that sailed around the world. There their knowledge ends, or such as it is, since as Bergreen reminds us in wonderful detail, it was some of Magellan's crew that actually sailed around the world while the majority of it, along with Magellan himself, actually only survived part of the trip.
Packed with historical detail supplemented by first person accounts and side stories that some will find of equal or surpassing interest and others might find too digressive, Bergreen gives us a satisfyingly full look at the man and the journey.
The focus for the first three-quarters of the book is of course on Magellan. His early life history is quickly covered, enough to inform us of his abilities and motivations without bogging the reader down in unnecessary detail or too much psychohistory ("rejected by his father at age six, young Magellan turned to the sea to prove . . . "). The details start to come in Magellan's early attempts to convince his native Portugal to sponsor a journey to the Spice Islands and accumulate even more fully once he takes his leave for Spain and the planning for the trip begins in earnest.
The trip itself is covered in sharp and vivid detail--the political in-fighting, the mutual antagonisms of class and country aboard ship, multiple mutiny attempts, successful and not-so-succesful contacts with natives, and of course the nautical travails themselves--deathly storms,a myriad of navigational obstacles and pursuing Portugese. Not to mention the fact that the entire trip was based on an idea that the world was much, much smaller than it in fact turned out to be.
Most of the trip is seen through the lens of Magellan, and while a clear fan of Magellan, Bergreen is also unafraid to criticize his many errors with regard to ship policy, to politics, to contact with the natives. Magellan comes across as a complex all-too human figure rather than an icon or simple villain. Brilliant at times and amazingly stupid at others, he never fails to hold our attention. Other important figures in the crew are offered similar respect with regard to the fullness of their portrayals.
Beside the journey's details, the reader is treated to digressions into royal relationships, international maneuvering, the importance of spices to sixteenth century economies, the running battle for economic and nautical supremacy between Spain and Portugal, and maybe most fascinating of all, a brief history of the Chinese Treasure Fleet. While some might think Bergreen goes into too much detail here, other might wish for more. I personally fell somewhere in between, able to live with less on the royal personages and wanting more on the spice trade itself (those who feel the same way could do worse than turn to Nathaniel's Nutmeg for more on the topic)as well as on the Treasure Fleet.
I thought at times Bergreen could have left the "European" perspective a bit more, giving us a more full glimpse at the journey from the other end of the spectrum. I also could have done with more frequent use of maps throughout the book to have a more immediate and visual sense of Magellan's progress (or lack thereof). While I felt the lack of both several times, these flaws were relatively minor and only detracted somewhat from the work as a whole. Money, lust, greed, politics, mutiny, pride, betrayal, tragic accidents, man versus nature, battles, shipwrecks, castaways, man versus man, heroism and cowardice, man versus himself. The book has it all, with the added luxury of being true. Well-recommended history.
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Summary: Into the depths of the globe
Review: Over the edge of the world is a fascinating account of the material aspects of the globe. Laurence Bergreen through this book takes the reader into a world which is brushed with strokes of reality. He seeps down the covers of reality into its beds of deepest truths, which have been discovered by thousands who trample upon it and yet thousands lie untouched.
The passages are written with lucidity and transparently. We are constantly traveling into the beautiful sites visited by the writer. The imagery resounds with life which seems to throb in each word. Nature seems to embrace the reader at various points.
"To everyone's surprise, the glaciers were neither white nor grey, but a light, almost iridescent blue that in the crevasses and seams darkened to a deep azure."
In Over the Edge of the World, author Laurence Bergreen, weaves a web of lively first-person accounts, which remain absent amongst the literary thought pattern. This tale of discovery yields reality that was residing under the thick cover of snowy mountains.
"Consisting of packed snow and ice, the glaciers never rested; they cracked, they groaned, they roared, and they threatened to decompose and tumble onto the beaches and water below...."
Each chapter opens with a verse from Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner,
unfolding the depth and mysteries of water bodies. But a certain lapse is created
amongst the relativity of the prose with the verses.
Each chapter begins with a verse from Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, surely one of the great narrative poems of an ocean voyage, but with only marginal relevance to the text. The book does not provide any footnotes or supporting material. There are certain colour plates given between the texts which are nifty for the reader. These are only minor distractions, however, and make the book no less compelling. This is the first time in nearly half a century that anyone has attempted to narrate the complete story of Magellan's consummate circumnavigation of the globe -- to tell this truly gripping a profoundly important story of heroism, discovery, and disaster. This epic forms a legendary character when it carries a majestic tale from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance setting, where tribes venture forth on cultural and societal discoveries. In this fictitious book man is explored into his various colours and forms which have been unknown to the Europeans.
Laurence Bergreen takes readers on the voyage of discovery with Magellan for exploration. They have encounters with rebellion, suffering and death in its darkest shades. He narrates the unusual sexual practices the crew indulges in, from orgies in Brazil to bizarre customs in the South Pacific. The five ships loaded with two hundred men set out in search of the Spice Islands. After three years of explorations they return with the treasure of spices. But what is most horrifying is the return of spices with only eighteen men who had escaped death. The tale is very much similar to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness in its presentation of death, disease which envelope man into the darkness of human desire. Bergreen analyses the mission in its political and economic genres, describing the economic importance of the spice trade in Europe: a small sack of spices brought back by a sailor was worth enough money to buy a house, and to provide financial security. It is no wonder, in this context, that European kings and their backers would finance perilous missions across the globe in pursuit of little money in contrast to precious human life.
The passages including Magellan and his crew are carefully knit with restraint experienced by these men. The reports of treachery are worth reading. The tensions between the Portuguese captain and his Spanish underlings on the Spanish expedition, the eventual mutiny of three of his five ships and his cunning recovery of his entire armada, and Magellan's ill-advised crusades in the Philippines that cost him his life, are all compelling and very clearly written. For a general reader Over the edge of the world is an interesting tale of discovery. As all histories it is precise and speaks factuality on a navigational plane and chronicles the desperate grab for political and commercial interests. The dangers of life at sea are seethed during the colonial period when the West was immersed in its imperialistic designs bringing misery and death to the ignorant world.
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Summary: Book Needs A Good Editor
Review: Sometimes the story here just drags like an anchor in the water. The book needed a professional editor who cared about the subject matter more. There needs to be more story telling, more life to the subject matter. In the end the book was dull.
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Summary: Excellent first book about Magellan
Review: The author nicely maintains the balance between interesting narrative and interpretive history. He presents Magellan as a larger than life hero and flawed human being all at the same time. The book does a very good job of explainig the historical context for Magellan's voyage.
Rating: 
Summary: Plodding and conventional
Review: The fascinating story of Magellan is not told with much style, intuition, or technical knowledge here. The author is quick to invoke a 21st century tut-tut whenever Magellan is not sufficiently sensitive to the natives, which must make him feel good, but adds nothing to our understanding of the time. Lots of digressions into fairly uninteresting matters fill out the book, apparently to conceal a lack of specific information on many of the events of the voyage. No original thoughts, research, or insights. No feel for the seaman's life, such as we might get from Patrick O'Brian or someone else with a solid understanding of the subject matter.
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