J. M. Cohen – författare

No gamble in history has been more momentous than the landfall of Columbus's ship the Santa Maria in the Americas in 1492 - an event that paved the way for the conquest of a 'New World'. The accounts collected here provide a vivid narrative of his voyages throughout the Caribbean and finally to the mainland of Central America, although he still believed he had reached Asia. Columbus himself is revealed as a fascinating and contradictory figure, fluctuating from awed enthusiasm to paranoia and eccentric geographical speculation. Prey to petty quarrels with his officers, his pious desire to bring Christian civilization to 'savages' matched by his rapacity for gold, Columbus was nonetheless an explorer and seaman of staggering vision and achievement.

'You have dark eyes. Gleams there that promise darkness'. Spanish poetry is astonishing in its richness and variety. This anthology covers the two great flowerings of Spanish verse: the first, which lasted to the end of the seventeenth century, and second, from the mid-nineteenth century through the Spanish Civil War, to the present. This third edition has been revised to represent more fully the poetry of resistance that emerged during the Franco years, giving more space to older poets such as Jorge Guillén and the great survivor of the Lorca generation and Nobel Prize winner Vicente Aleixandre, as well as a number of more contemporary poets who have forged a new era in Spanish poetry.This edition also includes an introduction discussing the history and world significance of Spanish poetry. 'No body of lyrical poetry is so seriously under-estimated by British readers as the Spanish' - J. M. Cohen. This book is translated and edited with an introduction by J. M. Cohen.