Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting, and the Discovery of the New World

(Paperback)

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What gave Christopher Columbus the confidence in 1492 to set out across the Atlantic Ocean Fish on Friday tells the story of the discovery of America as a product of the long sweep of history: the spread of Christianity and the radical cultural changes it brought to Europe, the interaction of economic necessity with a changing climate, and generations of unknown fishermen who explored the North Atlantic in the centuries before Columbus. A fascinating and multifaceted book, Fish on Friday will intrigue everyone who wonders how the vast forces of climate, culture, and technology conspire to create the history we know.

Reviews

"Fish on Friday is an enormously erudite, enjoyable and well-written pioneering journey into a world that all too few histories touch upon... Brian Fagan is justly renowned for is immensely readable books on the human past. Fish on Friday is by far his best." Times Higher Education Supplement "Fagan gives us a real flavour of life at the time (literally - there are recipes here). Over generations, he argues persuasively, fishermen pushed ever further westward across the Atlantic, the unassuming "advance guard" of European exploration in North America." The Scotsman"

Author Bio

Brian Fagan is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he has written many internationally acclaimed popular books about archaeology, including The Little Ice Age, Floods, Famines, and Emperors, and The Long Summer. He lives in Santa Barbara, California.