About the Author

Carol Delaney received an MTS from Harvard Divinity School and a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Chicago and is a graduate of Boston University. She is now a professor emerita at Stanford University and a research scholar at Brown University.

Reviews

"""A decidedly different approach to the man who discovered America." -"The New York Post"""

"A brazen attempt to construct a parable for our times." --"Booklist"

"Carol Delaney's "Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem"...elegantly tells a familiar story--with a twist...The result is a revealing new view of Columbus." "Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year"

"A dramatic story with repercussions that could reach the heavens." --"Washington Post"

"A new and provocative interpretation of Columbus. Carol Delaney uses her training as a cultural anthropologist to brilliantly explicate Columbus's strange, apocalyptic world. By being more sensitive to the differentness of the past than most historians, she has written a remarkable work of history, and one that is utterly accessible." -- Gordon S. Wood, author of "The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth fo the United States"

"A welcome reappraisal of Columbus and his legacy." --Kirkus Reviews

"Brilliant. Enlightening. The surprise here is not that a vaunted academic like Delaney has written such a deeply researched take on the Columbus legacy, but that she does so with page-turning style, effortlessly transporting the modern reader into the minds and motivations of 15th-century Europe." -Martin Dugard, author of "The Last Voyage of Columbus"

"Everybody knows the story of Columbus, right? Wrong. For far too long, writers have chosen to ignore one of Columbus's most powerful motivations: religion. In this exhaustively researched and engagingly written account, Carol Delaney reveals the remarkable extent to which Columbus sailed across the Atlantic not just to reach the other side but also to hasten the Christian recapture of Jerusalem -- and help bring about the end of the world. This is a fascinating and important book." - Toby Lester, author of "The Fourth Part of the World"

"This absorbing book adds a new and penetrating chapter to the long history of Jerusalem. But it does so by recapturing some fascinating and critical information about another iconic figure, namely Christopher Columbus who - Delaney makes clear - sailed west, but had Jerusalem on his mind the whole time. Carefully documented and well crafted, the book reads like a superb historical novel. Columbus himself nearly steps off the pages, and when we are finished we know him much better than we have before, including his idiosyncrasies, delusions and uncanny maritime skills." --Harvey Cox, author of "The Future of Faith"