Laurence Bergreen

Laurence Bergreen discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Laurence Bergreen is an award-winning biographer, historian, and chronicler of exploration. His books have been translated into more than 25 languages. They include Columbus: The Four Voyages, a New York Times bestseller, published by Viking in 2011. In 2007, Knopf published his Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu. For this book he crossed China from east to west and camped out on the steppe with hospitable Mongolians in their yurts. His bestselling Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe, was published by William Morrow in 2003. In its 40th printing, it was awarded the Medalla de Honor by the Asociación de Alcades de V Centenario (Spain). He has also published In Search of a Kingdom about Francis Drake's voyage of discovery (Simon & Schuster, 2021) and Voyage to Mars: NASA’s Search for Life Beyond Earth published by Riverhead in 2000.

His research for these books included extensive fieldwork. He has sailed twice through the Strait of Magellan and is one of the few individuals to visit the volcanic island of Surtsey off the coast of Iceland, thanks to the agile helicopters of the Icelandic Coast Guard, among other remote destinations. At NASA’s request, he named numerous geographical features around the crater Victoria on Mars. Find out more at https://laurencebergreenauthor.com/.

1. Louis Armstrong's favourite instrument https://oztypewriter.blogspot.com/2020/09/what-wonderful-world-with-typewriters.html

2. The Well Dressed Man with a Beard by Wallace Stevens https://allpoetry.com/The-Well-Dressed-Man-With-A-Beard

3. Vladimir Zworykin https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/vladimir-zworykin

4. Surtsey https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1267/

5. The Strait of Magellan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOOKr8Y2xsM

6. The Rubin Observatory https://rubinobservatory.org/

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