Een wonderbaarlijk boek over een wonderbaarlijke (onechte) zoon van Columbus. Een man die homo universalis wilde zijn door alle informatie te verzamelen die er te verzamelen was. Daarbij het avontuur van zijn leven en het avontuur van het catalogiseren van zijn boeken en zijn "folderwerk". Hoe gezegend wij zijn met computers, Internet, databases, tags en indices, en hoe schatplichtig we zijn aan mensen zoals Ferdinand (Hernando) Columbus. ( )

Enjoyable, thorough and insightful research, well written. The British author does suffer from the "lack-of-paragraph-indent" shortage - I'm sorry, but a paragraph length should not exceed a page. Take a breath now and then. It's not like the indents are expensive or anything like that - apparently the British just suffer from a shortage of them and I, for one, am in favor of donating a few extra ones I have around here, see if that helps (note to British authors - I think they are even reusable, indefinitely). Fascinating story, first rate in that regard. Many things were new to me, and after reading untold numbers of non-fiction books in my life, that is a delight in itself. Go for it, if you like history and sleuthing, you'll like this. ( )

First, I recommend the existing reviews on this site. Second it seems this work would be of interest to just about everyone with a thousand or more works listed here. Third, by happenstance I read this shortly after "Life is Simple" by John Joe McFadden, which is basically the role of Occam's razor in organizing scientific thought. These two works together form a nice review of thought and knowledge in world of expanding information and two of the organizing principles that help us deal with it.

Edward Wilson-Lee's biography of Hernando Colón - the second and illegitimate son of Christopher Columbus - starts off slowly but builds to a really engrossing second half.

Sometimes known as Fernando (or Ferdinand in English), Hernando was born in the late 1480s. Among his many accomplishments was his attempt to establish a library unique for his time. He was an avid book collector, living during the time when the printing press was revolutionizing the world of books.

The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books is written in four parts. Part 1 takes about a third of the total book, and relates Hernando's young life through the death of his famous father in 1506. His father is seen as a man intent on maintaining his position within the Spanish court, and preserving the vast New World holdings granted him by Ferdinand and Isabella. He claimed Hernando as his son and used his connections within the court to remove the stigma of illegitimacy from him. Even so, being the second son he did not inherit his father's title and position in the New World and had to make his own way.

Hernando was himself attached to the Spanish court from a young age, and managed to successfully support himself after his father's death by finding projects and undertakings with the court's blessings and support. This success continued beyond the death of Ferdinand and Isabella into the reign of Charles I. He traveled with the court and Royal family throughout Europe. This takes up much of Part II.

Finally, in Part III we get to the meat of the story, and the rest of the book becomes much more interesting. It's here, in Hernando's thirties, that his love of books begins to become the theme that would define the rest of his life.

Hernando lived at the height of the Italian Renaissance, and his travels took him to Rome and the Vatican to see some of the flourishing of the arts happening there. Classical texts were being rediscovered and the magic of the printing press made them widely available throughout Europe. Hernando began to collect books, and pamphlets and other printed materials on his travels, and to read extensively.

During this time many were struggling to come up with ways to understand and organize the enormity of the flowering of knowledge that was happening. Hernando's response to this challenge was his attempt to gather up all the printed works "from within Christendom and without" and assemble them in a library.

Just assembling books on the scale he was doing had not been done before. His collection is estimated to have contained upwards of twenty thousand books, pamphlets and other printed materials and manuscripts. The sheer quantity presented new challenges. How would anyone find the book they needed when there were literally tens of thousands of books in this library? To meet these challenges Hernando first devised a new method to house the books, leading to the first known use of bookshelves - books having been chained to desks or kept in stacks previously.

He devised a way of indexing books on slips of paper that was a predecessor for the card catalog. He created a "Book of Epitomes" that had capsule descriptions of the books in the library - an early form of book review.

His vision was that his index and his Book of Epitomes would be made available throughout Spain, allowing access to anyone who wanted to make use of the knowledge contained within his library.

In short, the model he created for assembling the knowledge found in printed material, indexing it and making it sortable and accessible to the public, was so far ahead of it's time that it wasn't attempted again until the era of digitization made the Google Book project achievable.

3 of 5 Stars ⭐⭐⭐ for The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books. By the way, the title of the book comes from a shipment of Hernando's book purchases that was lost at sea, though he had already catalogued them. In the end, I did like this book - I loved the second half. But it started off very slowly - to the point that I began to wonder if it was worth continuing to read. I am really glad I persevered. ( )

Hernando Colòn was the youngest (and an illegitimate) son of Christopher Columbus. Hernando travelled with his father on his last voyage to the new world in 1502. During the trip, Hernando found he had a joy in making lists and descriptions of things as various as shipboard items and descriptions of lands visited.

Returning to Europe, he began to collect art prints. Since his collection contained thousands of them, he began to device ways of classifying them to ensure he would not have duplicates.

So when his prime love turned to book collection, he also invented ways to classify them – including books listing volumes, price, etc. But these were not enough and he began devising ways that he could locate volumes that included various subjects, which he called Book of Epitomes – a way to extract the ideas of each volume by summarizing the arguments. This was a forerunner of today’s card catalog and Google searches.

This was the time of the High Renaissance in Europe. Printing press were king and the books written by the philosophers and theologians of the day were changing the course of Western History.Hernando threw himself into collecting – not just major works by contemporary authors such as Martin Luther, but also broadsheets and pamphlets which often were thought to have little value. He and his designated lieutenants scoured Europe and beyond for his collection.

Even with the loss from a shipwreck of 1637 books, he managed to amass a collection of some twenty thousand books which eventually became the Biblioteca Hernandina in Seville, Spain. Upon his death, the books, prints, broadsides and pamphlets were not valued and most of them were destroyed or decayed. Only a few thousand exist today.

This is a fascinating book. There is lots of wonderful history of the Age of Discovery, the High Renaissance, the sack of Rome in 1527 which caused the loss of the Vatican library, and Hernando’s struggle to establish his father as the discoverer of the New World.
Recommended to those who are bibliophiles or love libraries, but history lovers will also enjoy this, too. It took me quite a while to read this, but although it was harder for me with my limited knowledge of the European history and politics of the late 1400’s and early 1500’s, I thought it was a fascinating read.

It is beautifully illustrated with an amazing number of prints and maps from the time period. ( )