After some distraction,* I'm finally updating this blog's Resources pages again, starting with Biographies and Long-Form Accounts of Ferdinand Magellan and related history/characters. Added are several entries, old and new, and basic sources that include related documents and materials.
Highlights: Roger Crowley's Spice: The 16th-century Contest that Shaped the Modern World, which presents the race between Portugal, Spain, and others to claim the Moluccas, the source of cloves and nutmeg. It's a story that begins with the Portuguese (and Magellan) in Malacca.
Also Malyn Newitt's Navigations: The Portuguese Discoveries and the Renaissance. United Kingdom: Reaktion Books, 2023, a survey of exploration by the Portuguese. It's a story that begins with a look at the world before the fifteenth century—the ideas, commerce, technology and ships—and goes on to cover events from Henry the Navigator through Magellan—"Navigator as an Epic Hero," which is not, as the name suggests, a romanticized account of the explorer.
Notes:
* Juana la Loca and Genghis Khan looting the state treasury.