Later Felipe would read my manuscript and help me improve it before it became a book he wrote a blurb when it was published promoted it in England and beyond got it noticed in The Economist passed judgment on my tenure followed me around with letters of support in my peripatetic existence. He came for dinner and met my kids, Sebastian and Andrea, both then toddlers. I approached him for the first time in Spanish and a friendship emerged. The whole thing was frightening to me at the time.Īnd then one day, I noticed Felipe spoke Spanish. When asked about his own research, he would reply “civilizations.” It turns out, that year, he was writing that book. During the fellows’ luncheons he would tear into the other fellows’ arguments with probing, disarming questions, prefaced always by a learned and most insightful comment on any and every field of expertise. I don’t remember the official title he was given, some kind of JCB lordship: The Lord of the Rings, I think. His accent and demeanor made him seem unapproachable. One of the first things I learned at the JCB was that Felipe occupied the office right next to ours. I had a fellowship to the John Carter Brown Library. How to Write the History of the New World. Millennium came to me as a breadth of fresh air: irreverent, fast paced, learned, entertaining, full of strange and fascinating vignettes, from Ming China to Peronist Argentina. Global history was yet to produce a multimillion dollar textbook industry. I was to offer kids sweeping panoramas: from the age of the dinosaurs to current events, namely, the Cold War. I had just finished graduate school and I was earning my bread and butter teaching large survey classes of Latin American History, and even larger ones of World History. I was dazzled by Felipe’s Columbus: the flow, the style of his writing, the power of his argument. I first came across Felipe many more years ago than I care to admit: I met his words first, before I met him. I cherish our friendship and I admire his work that much. Felipe Fernández-Armesto is worth these troubles and more. I plowed my way to the Morris Inn at 2:30 am, dragging luggage for three blocks through the snow with soaked, freezing feet. As temperatures kept dropping and a snowstorm was fast approaching, I just jumped on a bus to go to Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. Our America Two flights had been cancelled in Chicago and I had already waited for seven hours to catch a plane.
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