"This is the story of a voyage that was in reality one of the most disastrous in the history of overseas exploration but which has now become one of its greatest triumphs--and of a man who failed at almost everything he set out to do and yet became one of the great heroes of modernity. 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