1492 : The Year Our World Began

The world would end in 1492 - so the prophets, soothsayers and stargazers said. They were right. Their world did end. But ours began. In search of the origins of the modern world, 1492 takes readers on a journey around the globe of the time, in the company of real-life travellers, drawing together the threads that began to bind the planet: from the way power and wealth are distributed around the globe to the way major religions and civilizations divide the world. Events that began in 1492 even transformed the whole ecological system of the planet. Wars and witchcraft, plagues and persecutions, poetry and prophecy, science and magic, art and faith - all the glories and follies of the time are in this book.

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto was born in London in 1950. His books include The Times Atlas of World Exploration, Columbus, Edward Gibbon's Atlas of the World, Barcelona: a Thousand Years of the City's Past, Millennium and Truth. Translations of his work have appeared in twenty languages and he has been shortlisted for numerous prizes. Fernandez-Armesto is Professor of Global Environmental History at Queen Mary, University of London, and has been a member of the Faculty of Modern History at Oxford University since 1983. From September 2005 he has been Principe de Asturias Chair in Spanish Culture and Civilization at Tufts University. He lives in Oxford