Toward the Setting Sun

David Boyle tells the intertwined story of Christopher Columbus, John Cabot and Amerigo Vespucci during the first great burst of Atlantic exploration in the 1490s. Their voyages were shaped by competition between courts, merchants and navigators seeking western routes to Asian markets, while information about winds, coastlines and rival expeditions moved through overlapping networks of patronage and espionage.

Rather than treating the three explorers as isolated heroic figures, Boyle places them inside a common commercial and political race. Columbus sailed for Castile, Cabot won backing from Henry VII in England, and Vespucci worked within Iberian maritime networks that helped Europeans understand that the lands across the Atlantic formed a previously unknown continent.