"Fear of Islam Shaped His View of Native Americans"

"The answer lies in Columbus'—and Europe's—long history of crusading against Islam. The crucible of centuries of these religious wars, and the increasing encroachment of the Ottomans and other Muslims in the years after 1453, forged the notion of Islam as an enemy in the minds of Columbus, Cortés and the thousands of other Europeans who fought Muslims in the Old World and then American Indians in the New World."

Alan Mikhail in the Los Angeles Times discusses the "centrality of Islam" for Christopher Columbus.

Columbiana

Edward Burmila at The Nation and Heather Cox Richardson at We're History discuss the history of Columbus and Columbus Day, respectively.

"There Is, of Course, Much That Historians Can Learn from Novelists"

"Fifteenth-century history is highly contested, and much of what Jones must navigate his way through has been the subject of intense historiographical debate: how much was William de la Pole, Earl and later Duke of Suffolk, chief minister to Henry VI, to blame for what went wrong in the 1440s? Jones does not interrupt his narrative to introduce the disputed nature of events, but he does give a strong line of argument, and those who wish to know the terms of the argument must head to his notes. This is not to suggest any antithesis between history as research and narrative: one paragraph, about the library of Katherine de la Pole, abbess of Barking Abbey, struck me as taking a phenomenal amount of research to construct, but Jones rises elegantly to the challenge."


In New Statesmen, Suzannah Lipscomb reviews Tracy Boorman's Thomas Cromwell: the Untold Story of Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant and Dan Jones's The Hollow Crown: the Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors.

"Upended the Entire Intellectual Tradition of Its Discoverers"

"Irish and Italian immigrants proudly pointed to Columbus' Roman Catholic religion to fight the prejudice they experienced in their adopted country, and in 1882, they founded the Knights of Columbus, now the world's largest Catholic service organization. But during the late 20th century, Native Americans bristled at the notion of Columbus' 'discovery,' feeling that their ancestral lands didn't need discovering.
"But the real reason Columbus' voyages should be remembered—and celebrated—is for their central role in prying loose European curiosity from the vise put in place by the medieval church."

Joyce Appleby in the Los Angeles Times considers a legacy of 1492.

And Yoni Appelbaum at The Atlantic discusses the history of Columbus Day.

The Winter of His Disinterment

"The injury appears to confirm contemporary accounts that he died in close combat in the thick of the battle and unhorsed – as in the great despairing cry Shakespeare gives him: 'A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!'"

Maev Kennedy in The Guardian reports the confirmation of the discovery of Richard III's remains in Leicester, England.