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Over the Edge of the World
Over the Edge of the World
Over the Edge of the World
Audiobook (abridged)6 hours

Over the Edge of the World

Written by Laurence Bergreen

Narrated by Laurence Bergreen

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

A majestic tale of discovery thatchanged many long-held views about the world

In 1519 Magellan and his fleet of five ships set sail from Seville, Spain, to discover a water route to the fabled Spice Islands in Indonesia, where the most sought-after commodities -- cloves, pepper, and nutmeg -- flourished. Three years later, a handful of survivors returned with an abundance of spices from their intended destination, but with just one ship carrying eighteen emaciated men. During their remarkable voyage around the world the crew endured starvation, disease, mutiny, and torture. Many men died, including Magellan, who was violently killed in a fierce battle.

This is the first full account in nearly half a century of this voyage into history: a tour of the world emerging from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance; a startling anthropological account of tribes, languages, and customs unknown to Europeans; and a chronicle of a desperate grab for commercial and political power.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperAudio
Release dateJan 27, 2004
ISBN9780060747787
Over the Edge of the World
Author

Laurence Bergreen

LAURENCE BERGREEN is the bestselling author of Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe. His other books include Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492–1504; Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu; and Voyage to Mars: NASA’s Search for Life Beyond Earth. A graduate of Harvard, Bergreen lives in Manhattan.

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Reviews for Over the Edge of the World

Rating: 4.097667653061224 out of 5 stars
4/5

686 ratings150 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I wasn't sure if I was going to like this book but I thought I would give it a try. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I think it took me two days to read it, it was such an easy read. She did a great job making you care for the characters and really gave you a look at Indian culture.

    It didn't end the way I thought it would but I think it was the right ending. I recommend this book, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a fascinating account of life in India and growing up adopted. I loved every second of it and it felt so real I thought I actually knew the characters.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An adopted Indian girl goes back to India and decides to look find out something about her roots. In addition, the story does include the story of her family of natural origin. Story was good, but it seemed like the writing needed a little tweaking. The description of the culture of India as well as the treatment of females in India among the poor was very interesting. I would have had a different ending.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A fantastic read! Very poignant and touching; I could not put it down.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really enjoyed the book and in particular enjoyed reading about India and life there. I appreciated the multiple points of view and ultimately found this a very satisfying novel.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    ABRIDGED! ! I feel had.Good book for what you get,though.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Secret Daughter is wonderfully told, a page turner for me. Admittedly, I found Somer irritatingly clingy in the beginning of the novel; however, her redemption was authentic and enjoyable to observe. Definitely a rec!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

    The author is Indian. Her parents migrated to Canada from Mumbai. This novel was a New York Bestseller for her and also an international bestseller. She spent a summer as a volunteer in an Indian orphanage. This story is of an Indian girl adopted by an Indian father and white mother (both doctors) living in the United States, covers what it is like to be adopted and provides information about girls born in India. Ashe travels to India and spends time with her father’s family and works for the India Times. I was surprised that a country that won’t harm their cows would infanticide their girl babies. The story also paints a picture of wealthy Indian family contrasted with a family that is not so lucky. It was like to parallel stories and though they cross at the very end but only slightly, the two stories remain two stories. The author also gives a look into the Hindu religion. The story was enjoyable but also never felt quite right. Once again the author starts with a bright woman, Somer, who becomes a complete idiot from the time she becomes a doctor until her fifties. She does wake up and become smart again but it just seemed so convenient to the story. The adopted girl is annoying through her high school years and that probably is pretty accurate and adopted girls want to find their parents more often that adopted boys. She is able to resolve her issues of adoption and realize that she has been given many blessings. I did like the second half of the book more than the first half. The story really doesn’t start until then. It has a nice ending though a little abrupt.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I first gave it a 4 stars rating, but the story is still echoing in my head, it touched me deeply, the fates of all these women, i can't shake it off my mind. Since I cannot give it a 4.5, I'm rating it 5 stars. The book educates us about the gender injustices, about human nature. The characters are rich, though not as deep as I like my characters, but the writer is pretty young, and pretty talented, and I give her credit for this wonderful book. The strength of these women, I am very moved.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Incredible story! Magellan is a true flawed hero and the tale is told captivatingly and clearly. Excellent book and well read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a touching story of three women. Kavita, the Indian woman who gave up her daughter in order to save her from infanticide, Somer, the American woman, married to an Indian immigrant, who adopts the child, and Usha/Asha, the daughter they both love. It is a touching story about international adoption and its joys and complications, but the ending was a little too neat and the lessons a little to succinct and a bit sappy for me. A quick, uplifting read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I like a book with strong characters. This book checked that box for me and more. It was a quick read with a satisfying ending.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Enjoyable tale of important history, that is well written and narrated.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    What a wonderful, heartwarming (and heartbreaking) story. Ms Gowda is such a fantastic and gifted storyteller. So many lives moving in so many directions yet still convene with the author’s beautiful weaving of their lives. I can’t wait to read The Shape of Family next.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Told over a twenty year period and set against the backdrop of India, this is an captivating story about adoption, motherhood, families and identity. Asha, Kavita and Somer are all strong female protagonists who are drawn together through unusual circumstances. However, some of the other characters are not as well-developed, especially those in Asha's extended family. The cultural differences between America and India, and the social inequality between rich and poor is clearly highlighted in "Secret Daughter" without becoming too in-depth and spoiling the overall story. The book moves between the two cultures effortlessly and I particularly enjoyed the author's detailed descriptions of India as they give the reader some vivid insights into this fascinating country.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Can hardly believe how good this book was. Imagining this voyage, in all its horror and glory, along with all the distortions of records kept by various dramatic characters throughout — what an incredible story!!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    What a wonderful, heartwarming (and heartbreaking) story. Ms Gowda is such a fantastic and gifted storyteller. So many lives moving in so many directions yet still convene with the author’s beautiful weaving of their lives. I can’t wait to read The Shape of Family next.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It's interesting that I just happened to read Shilpi Somaya Gowda's Secret Daughter right after finishing Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Both books take place in India, but one is a nonfiction, in-depth look at life in a Mumbai slum, and the other is a fiction book that talks about a college student who writes a newspaper piece about mothers in the Mumbai slums. As I read Secret Daughter, I used much of what I learned about life in India in Behind the Beautiful Forevers to illuminate the fictional scenes.Secret Daughter is jointly about a poor Indian woman who travels to Mumbai to give her infant daughter to an orphanage rather to save her life, and the husband and wife from the United States who adopt that child about a year later. Kavita must give Usha (later Asha) up for adoption because otherwise her husband (convinced they are too poor to have expensive daughters and will only accept a boy baby) will kill the baby girl, just as he did the first daughter Kavita birthed. Meanwhile, in the United States, Somer and her Indian-born husband Kris discover that they will never be able to have children of their own. Kris enthusiastically looks into adopting a child from his home country, but Somer is reluctant and unsure that adoption is a convincing substitute for having her own child. They end up traveling to India (an experience that Somer hates) and adopting Kavita's baby girl, now called Asha.As Asha grows, she feels like she's trapped between two worlds. She doesn't fit in with her Indian classmates - she hasn't even been to India since she was a baby and her parents don't raise her with traditional Indian customs. But she also feels and looks different than her white classmates. From an early age she starts writing and storing letters to her real mother and grows to almost resent her adoptive parents. "They don't understand me because they're not really my parents; my real mother would understand me" becomes Asha's prevailing attitude as she ages and goes to college to study journalism.It is there that she wins a fellowship to go abroad for a year. Asha plans to travel to India to do a project about children growing up in poverty. Secretly, she also hopes to find her birth parents.I was not overly impressed with Secret Daughter - I wondered about how realistic the author's portrayal of adoption was. Not so much the adoption process, but the emotions involved. Now, I have no personal experience with adoption - I was not adopted and I have never adopted anyone else - but would Asha's resentment toward the parents who loved and provided for her be realistic? No teenager thinks that her parents understand her. And I feel that Asha's feelings of alienation stem more from her blended ethnicity family than her adoption. Wouldn't the biological child of an American woman and an Indian man have the same struggles?My main complaint of the particular copy of the book that I read is that pages 215-246 were completely missing! So that's a pretty big chunk of story that I missed. I could sort of fill in the blanks based on the before and after context, but of course it wasn't the same.One thing that I particularly liked about Secret Daughter was some of the character development, specifically that of Jasu, Kavita's husband. At the beginning of the novel, I couldn't help but hate Jasu. He kills one of his new born daughters and would have killed the second if Kavita hadn't run away to Mumbai to bring her to the orphanage. She refuses to turn the baby over to Jasu, and he tries to reason with her, saying, "Look, Kavita, you know we can't keep this baby. We need a boy to help us in the fields. As it is, we can hardly afford one child, how can we have two? My cousin's daughter is twenty-three and still not married, because he can't come up with the dowry. We are not a rich family, Kavita. You know we can't do this... She will become a burden to us, a drain on our family" (pg. 15). Such an attitude is alien to my worldview and not something I can easily understand. But, as the novel progresses, Jasu changes. By the end, he could hardly be recognized as the same person. Gowda embraces reality in her portrayal of Jasu - people do change over the course of their lives.Overall, Secret Daughter wasn't polished enough for me - it didn't have the literary merit that is present in the books I consider excellent. Secret Daughter is a good bestseller-type of book, and bestsellers always seem to disappoint me a bit. I guess my tastes are just too esoteric.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Over the Edge of the World offers an engaging account of Magellan's voyage around the world. It describes the countless physical and political obstacles that European explorers faced in their quest for a sea route to the spice islands. At the same time, this account points to the devastating impact these voyages had on native populations.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    On the same shelf as My Daughter's Keeper and other drivel. I got a couple of chapters in, predicted the ending, detested the writing, decided I didn't want to waste my time. There are better books to read (You were right, Rachel!)
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I learned a lot about India society and culture in this book; the storyline, however, applies to people of many backgrounds and cultures; I felt love and warmth throughout; check out the Foreign Terms Glossary; could have been 150pp shorter
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I enjoyed reading Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda, and I thought it was a wonderful debut.The story centers around Asha, a baby adopted from an orphanage in India by her American mother and Indian American father, both doctors. Throughout the story the reader experiences Asha's growth from child to young woman.The author is gifted in the way she reveals each character's story. Kavita, the birth mother, risked everything to ensure that her daughter would survive, and despite her selflessness was haunted for the rest of her life for giving up her daughter. Somer, the adoptive mother, and overly critical of herself, centered her world around Asha, and yet, in many ways made herself an outsider in her own family. Krishnan, the adoptive father, struggled as an Indian American, trying to balance his passion for America and his love for his native homeland. Sarla, Asha's paternal grandmother, played an important role of bridging the two worlds. I learned a great deal from many of the minor characters as well, and each added to the story. I enjoyed the journey I shared with these characters, and their ultimate self-discovery.The reader learns what these characters are feeling and thinking, and discovers their past struggles and how their past decisions influenced their future. I felt many varied emotions for these characters at different points in the book. In the end, I learned that life is complicated; there are joys and hardships for everyone. All people shine at times and are less than proud of themselves at others. Those that endure have amazing stories to share and lessons to teach.I do not want to spoil the story by revealing too much, but I have to say that the weakest part of the book for me was Asha's final decision on whether to meet with her birth parents or not. Although in many ways a realistic choice, I wish the author would have gone in a different direction. The ending felt slightly flat to me.The writing was excellent, the story was fast moving, the alternating perspectives was engaging and the glimpses of India, both spectacular and tragic, were inspiring. I respect the author and her creative abilities; it was her story to tell, and there is no doubt that I would read her future work.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Somer is an accomplished medical doctor who discovers that she has sacrificed the family she has always wanted for the career that she has spent the first half of her life working towards. Kavita is your average Indian woman who hopes for the simple things in life, a honest husband, children to help with the home, and a roof to keep them all together. Two different women, two different lives, but both are inexplicably connected by one special girl - Asha. For Somer, she is the adopted daughter that she has always yearned for but couldn't conceive. For Kavita, she is the biological daughter that she has loved but cannot keep. Secret Daughter is the journey of these three women as they discover that the bonds of family and motherhood extend beyond the boundaries of physical ties and that love is a force that transcends beyond the limitations of our own human frailties and selfishness. Secret Daughter is a solid debut novel by Gowda as she explores the themes of adoption and how that affects not only the adopted, but the family that is left behind and the new family that is ushered into parenthood. The story was both gripping and heartbreaking, tragic yet triumphant. The heart of a mother is illuminated, showing us that motherhood comes in all different forms and fashions, but the tears, the joys, and the love for our children, is a truth that is universally shared and celebrated.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Recommended by a friend/patron... just was not my cup of tea tho.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This story of motherhood focused on the lives of three families separated by culture, continents and oceans, connected by marriage and adoption, was easy to read and difficult to swallow. It is built on every maternal. cultural, adoptive stereotype that comes easily to mind: all women want to bear children (unless they are selfish), adopted children always pine to know their 'real' parents, mothers rarely give up their children willingly, Western families are sterile by comparison to Asian families, mothers are the real glue that hold families together, women with children must sacrifice their careers, marriages grow stale if wives don't comprise, etc. etc. The only authentic moment in the text was the author's reaction to the mothers met in the slums of Mumbai; sadly, she did them a great disservice by implying that the women share equally in the difficulties they face.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This story is about adoption and about the feelings of the mother and daughter. It also gave you much insite into the culture of India. I enjoyed reading this bookas much for the story and learning about the culture of India.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A solid read about a person of history I knew little about. Over the Edge of the World tells the story, in detail, of Magellan's voyage around the world. It also tells, in detail, the history of everything associated with Magellan and his trip. I enjoyed the read, although at times I wished the author would move the story ahead rather than digress to look at the history of everything.

    The writing itself is fantastic. Bergreen is a journalist as opposed to a historian, and the writing style plays that out. It is writteen as a narrative and reads as a novel throughout the book.

    The author goes out of his way to defend Magellan and his actions, and I suppose that is what happens when you spend so much time researching and reading about a particular person.

    I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the Age of Discovery, exploration in general, or to learn about the journey of this legendary figure.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Gowda’s debut novel is the story of an adopted Indian girl from different points of view. For me, the most compelling voices were that of the mother who gave birth to an unwanted girl in India and a childless doctor in California married to a man born and raised in India. Add the voices of fathers, grandparents, and Asha herself, who began to wonder about her heritage after a school assignment about family history. Gowda’s perceptive in her writing from the different points of view, particularly when Asha goes to India to pursue an interest in journalism and she explores the lives of people living in a slum. Although she never gets to meet her mother, she discovers a lot about her mother and the strength and love of her adopted father’s mother. She comes to understand that if she had not been adopted, she would be living in a slum. A beautiful story introducing many readers to the reality of poverty and how sometimes giving up a child is done out of despair and hopes for the child’s future.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This was a beautiful story that moved me and educated me. Gowda did a wonderful job at presenting the Indian culture for both it's beauty and it's poverty. I think a quote from the book jacket describes the book better than I could - "Secret Daughter poignantly explores the emotional terrain of motherhood, loss, identity and love , as witnessed through the lives of two families-one Indian, one American-and the child that indelibly connects them." I thought it was a very good story and I loved the ending.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Great language although chapter 7 has a problem. The story cuts out and snags which means it misses out the part where the Captain General dies on Mactan, otherwise I loved listening to this story.