The Last Crusade
The Epic Voyages of Vasco da Gama

Holy War is a great book. It's an exciting, intiguing historical novel but is based on historically researched facts. It's core thesis was new to me as one trained in history at University. It sheds powerful light on the historicity of supremicist Islam's current revival of their 1,400 year old atte......more

Nigel Cliff has written a very readable and extremely interesting history of Vasco da Gama's voyages to India by sailing around the southern tip of Africa. Rather than launching straight into a biography of da Gama or starting with his first voyage, Cliff spends a good few chapters narrating a histo......more

Fascinating account of Vasco de Gama's trailblazing voyages around the tip of Africa and on to India. About the same time as Columbus, Gama's exploits were (at the time) considered more important, as here was a proven path to India, while it was yet unclear what exactly Columbus had found. Within 20......more

Very interesting as it gives a thorough exposition to Vasco da Gama history changing expedition, though with a great preview putting things in context and then it follows up with what happened later, but the focus is on da Gama and here the book differs from others who either focus on the whole Port......more

This book wasn't the straight-forward recounting of da Gama's life and voyages that I expected. Instead the author starts out with the history of Islam and its conquest of much of the globe before the ruling muslims were driven out of Europe. He ties da Gama's voyages to India into the european desi......more