On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus set foot on the shore of a new island in a New World. Columbus named that island San Salvador, but the native inhabitants called it Guanahani. For five hundred years, the location and identity of Guanahani remained a mystery. This book is the story of that mystery and of those who tried to solve it.

A striking narrative of a man's inadvertent discovery of the life force that persists in the most secluded of places--and isolated of beings After the death of his father, Alfred Van Cleef--the last of a family of Dutch Jews--learns that he is unable to have children. Seeking the remotest spot on the planet, far from the gleefully reproducing couples of Amsterdam, Van Cleef picks a forbidding island in the Indian Ocean, a bizarrely bureaucratic French weather station, two thousand miles from the nearest continent. Finally entrenched on this lonely, wind-battered rock--following an eight-year odyssey to obtain a visiting permit and three weeks' rough passage--Van Cleef anticipates a total escape from the sexual frenzy of humanity: the island, ironically named Amsterdam, is inhabited solely by a group of thirty-six men. Yet this stark environment turns out to house a riotously mating society of albatrosses, sea elephants, fur seals--and especially bdelloid rotifers, an all-female species able to reproduce without males. It is in this unlikely setting that Van Cleef is forced to reckon with his most profound existential concerns. With wry humor and probing insight, Van Cleef weaves geography, natural history, and biology into The Lost Island, an original narrative of a lost island and a man, finally found.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Gideon Crew--brilliant scientist, master thief--is living on borrowed time. When his mysterious employer, Eli Glinn, gives him an eyebrow-raising mission, he has no reason to refuse. Gideon's task: steal a page from the priceless Book of Kells, now on display in New York City and protected by unbreakable security. Accomplishing the impossible, Gideon steals the parchment--only to learn that hidden beneath the gorgeously illuminated image is a treasure map dating back to the time of the ancient Greeks. As they ponder the strange map, they realize that the treasure it leads to is no ordinary fortune. It is something far more precious: an amazing discovery that could perhaps even save Gideon's life. Together with his new partner, Amy, Gideon follows a trail of cryptic clues to an unknown island in a remote corner of the Caribbean Sea. There, off the hostile and desolate Mosquito Coast, the pair realize the extraordinary treasure they are hunting conceals an even greater shock-a revelation so profound that it may benefit the entire human race . . . if Gideon and Amy can survive.

This book was written as a series of bedtime stories to illustrate three of the greatest epics in human history. While it introduces children to the colorful stories of christopher columbus and the silk road, it connects to the even more amazing tale of the last ice age and how the first americans migrated from asia. It draws these historic events together to better illuminate what happened when the old world mixed with the new after thousands of years of isolation, resulting in the shape of the today's world. You will discover topics such as Cuba before columbus The arrival of the spaniards Slavery and sugarcane The cry of yara Freedom Independent at last A new leader And much, much more! The cartography of the day was incorrect, as he learned through bitter experience. Columbus is credited with the discovery of america but never realized it during his lifetime. His career as a navigator was peppered with mishaps that shattered the ignorance of the age. Although he was no scientist, columbus initiated new fields of study and analysis.

As the Thirty Years War rears its ugly head in the Rhine and European powers seek new lands to colonize in the Americas, clues contained in the pages of a medieval codex leading to a fortune of inestimable value are deciphered by reclusive monks who reveal the Tzedakah Prophecy, a legend that will spin a web of lust, intrigue, treason and vengeance that ensnared both the powerful and meek of the earth in its deadly net. As the race against time to find the Tzedakah ́s enormous wealth begins those who join the search include...The infamous Jewish pirate Moses Cohen Henriques who will never attack or murder on a Shabbat....King Frederick V of Bohemia in the Holy Roman Empire, the first Protestant to challenge papal authority and depose the Catholic Emperor Ferdinand II...Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand IIDominie Johannes Polhemius, who fights the Holy Inquisition as it advances in Europe and joins Prince Maurice to found one of the most glittering and prosperous Dutch colonies in Brazil, leaving behind his wife and daughter who he believes to have been killed in the plague..... Rabbi Aboab, leader of the large Jewish colony in Recife and founder of the first synagogue in the Americas.Prince Yuri Bbondi of Matamba, enslaved by Portuguese slave traders in Africa and taken to Brazil where he is freed by pirates and joins their ranks, later to fall in love with the pastor ́s daughter as she seeks out her father Dominie Polhemius who she considers abandoned her to her fate...Andrew Parrish, Dominie Polhemius ́s childhood friend whose double role as friend and enemy spy fools them all as they seek to unravel the mystery of the lost island of Guanahani and the enormous treasure it holds.......

As Columbus sets sail on his first voyage to the "Indies" from the Spanish port of Palos de la Frontera, he writes to his son Diego: "When we return, Diego, you will no longer be the son of a penniless vagabond. No, Diego, you will be the son of the Admiral of the Ocean Sea. As we cross the bar and leave the land to enter the great Ocean Sea, I speak this promise to you and to the wind: we will leave our mark, Diego, and ourname. Many will remember this day and this place. ''