For centuries, Ferdinand Magellan has been celebrated as a hero: a noble adventurer who circumnavigated the globe in an extraordinary feat of human bravery; a paragon of daring and chivalry.

Now, renowned historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto draws on extensive and meticulous research to conduct a dazzling investigation into Magellan's life, his character and his ill-fated voyage. He shows that Magellan did not attempt – much less accomplish – a journey around the globe, and that in his own lifetime, the explorer was abhorred as a traitor, reviled as a tyrant and dismissed as a failure.

He probes the passions and tensions that drove Magellan to adventure and drew him to disaster: the pride that became arrogance, daring that became recklessness, determination that became ruthlessness, romanticism that became irresponsibility, and superficial piety that became, in adversity, irrational exaltation. And as the real Magellan emerges, so to do his real ambitions, focused less on circumnavigating the world or cornering the global spice market than on exploiting Filipino gold.

Offering up a stranger, darker and even more compelling narrative than the fictional version that has been glorified for half a millennium, Straits untangles the myths that made Magellan a hero.

"Scintillating and compelling, and told with all of Felipe Fernández Armesto's habitual verve and wit, it is at the same time a sobering insight into how we have come to conceive our own increasingly globalized world." Anthony Pagden, author of Worlds at War: The 2,500-Year Struggle Between East and West

"Straits is a triumph of biographical writing. With his characteristic vigor and panache, Felipe Fernández-Armesto circumnavigates Magellan's life and times with a clearer object in mind and far greater success than ever imagined for this subject. He shows us not only the skills and bravado but also the intrigues, the self-deception, and even the insanity that animated Magellan's quest." Lincoln Paine, author of The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World

"By pulling apart the usually willfully misread sources in their original languages with a detective's eye for contradiction and inconsistency, Straits unravels a yarn of unmitigated failure punctuated by hubris, meanness, and crafty power grabs. The Ferdinand Magellan who emerges from these freshly disinterred sources is no hero but rather a ruthless gentleman of fortune who died to tell the tale."--Kris Lane, author of Potosi: The Silver City That Changed the World