Many a Harvard student in the last few years has been irritated to discover that he could take only half of History 60 in one year, the other half not being given. Any dissatisfaction he may have felt then may be more than recompensed now, however, for he has here the opportunity to benefit from the half-year periods which Professor Morison has spent away from the College. "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" is the product, not only of long and patient research in the records of Columbus and his contemporaries, but also of Professor Morison's own voyages along the routes of the Discoverer. And it is not exaggeration to say that this is one of the great biographies of our literature.

Professor Morison points out in his preface that most preceding works on the Admiral could be entitled "Columbus to the Water's Edge." They have been written by "indoor geographers and armchair admirals" who knew nothing of the pleasures and hazards of ocean travel. It was for this reason that Professor Morison took time out from his College work to lead his "Harvard Columbus Expedition" under much the same conditions as those which Columbus himself experienced.

The work itself is actually several books in one. In many ways it is similar to Moby Dick. For it not only tells of Columbus's life and voyages; it intersperses this material with many chapters on ships and sailing at the end of the fifteenth century. These chapters are fully as fascinating as the narrative itself, and are easily understood by the most ignorant landlubber.

"Admiral of the Ocean Sea" is by no means a staid biography. It explodes many of the myths that we have come to associate with Columbus, yet it does so in a light-hearted vein. Columbus did not have to convince the authorities that the world was round (they had known it long before); the story of Columbus and his egg was probably a figment of the imagination of a later writer; it is untrue that the invention of the astrolabe enabled Columbus to discover America--he didn't know how to use it then. Professor Morison can write beautiful prose, yet he employs colloquial language to good effect ("All in all, it seems to me that Columbus's shipmates were 'good guys' . . ."). The charts in the books, by Erwin Raisy, of the institute of Geographical Exploration, are excellent.