Cliff, Nigel. 2011. Holy War: How Vasco da Gama's Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations. Harper Collins Publisher.

Historian Nigel Cliff delivers a sweeping, radical reinterpretation of Vasco da Gama’s pioneering voyages, revealing their significance as a decisive turning point in the struggle between Christianity and Islam—a series of events which forever altered the relationship between East and West. Perfect for readers ofEndurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage, Galileo’s Daughter, and Atlantic, this first-ever complete account of da Gama’s voyages includes new information from the recently discovered diaries of his sailors and an extraordinary series of letters between da Gama and the Zamorin, a king of modern-day Kerala, India. Cliff, the author of The Shakespeare Riots, draws upon his own travels in da Gama’s footsteps to add detail, authenticity, and a contemporary perspective to this riveting, one-of-a-kind historical epic.

A sweeping historical epic and a radical new interpretation of Vasco da Gama’s groundbreaking voyages, seen as a turning point in the struggle between Christianity and Islam

In 1498 a young captain sailed from Portugal, circumnavigated Africa, crossed the Indian Ocean, and discovered the sea route to the Indies and, with it, access to the fabled wealth of the East. It was the longest voyage known to history. The little ships were pushed beyond their limits, and their crews were racked by storms and devastated by disease. However, their greatest enemy was neither nature nor even the sheer dread of venturing into unknown worlds that existed on maps populated by coiled, toothy sea monsters. With bloodred Crusader crosses emblazoned on their sails, the explorers arrived in the heart of the Muslim East at a time when the old hostilities between Christianity and Islam had risen to a new level of intensity. In two voyages that spanned six years, Vasco da Gama would fight a running sea battle that would ultimately change the fate of three continents.

An epic tale of spies, intrigue, and treachery; of bravado, brinkmanship, and confused and often comical collisions between cultures encountering one another for the first time; Holy War also offers a surprising new interpretation of the broad sweep of history. Identifying Vasco da Gama’s arrival in the East as a turning point in the centuries-old struggle between Islam and Christianity—one that continues to shape our world—Holy War reveals the unexpected truth that both Vasco da Gama and his archrival, Christopher Columbus, set sail with the clear purpose of launching a Crusade whose objective was to reach the Indies; seize control of its markets in spices, silks, and precious gems from Muslim traders; and claim for Portugal or Spain, respectively, all the territories they discovered. Vasco da Gama triumphed in his mission and drew a dividing line between the Muslim and Christian eras of history—what we in the West call the medieval and the modern ages. Now that the world is once again tipping back East, Holy War offers a key to understanding age-old religious and cultural rivalries resurgent today.

The contributions in this book draw attention to the close, though sometimes ambiguous, relationship between biography, aesthetics, ideology, social critique and gender in Dos Passos’s writings. Most of the essays are important additions to the ongoing scholarly critique on the author’s works, considered in terms of innovative literary techniques and the myriad of literary representations, as well as of core thematic issues that have helped define Dos Passos both as a towering figure of American Modernism, and outspoken political and social critic.

Further to scrutinizing Dos Passos’s biographic aspects and literary innovations, the book also offers invaluable insights into the historiographical, ideological and social dimensions of the American (and to some extent European) society of the time, dominated by unprecedented social and political instability that shattered the ‘American Dream’ of liberty and egalitarianism, and by international warfare.

The present collection of essays is a worthy contribution to the growing body of critical studies on John Dos Passos’s writings, which indisputably endorse the status of his literary name.

This book traces the history of early seventeenth-century Portuguese Sephardic traders who settled in two communities on Senegal's Petite Côte. There, they lived as public Jews, under the spiritual guidance of a rabbi sent to them by the newly established Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam. In Senegal, the Jews were protected from agents of the Inquisition by local Muslim rulers. The Petite Côte communities included several Jews of mixed Portuguese-African heritage as well as African wives, offspring, and servants. The blade weapons trade was an important part of their commercial activities. These merchants participated marginally in the slave trade but fully in the arms trade, illegally supplying West African markets with swords. This blade weapons trade depended on artisans and merchants based in Morocco, Lisbon, and northern Europe and affected warfare in the Sahel and along the Upper Guinea Coast. After members of these communities moved to the United Provinces around 1620, they had a profound influence on relations between black and white Jews in Amsterdam. The study not only discovers previously unknown Jewish communities but by doing so offers a reinterpretation of the dynamics and processes of identity construction throughout the Atlantic world.

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Mateus, Isabel Maria Fidalgo. 2011. A Terra do Chiculate – Relatos da Emigração Portuguesa”, Coimbra: Gráfica de Coimbra 2.

The story centers on a young girl and portrays the vicissitudes ofPortuguese (illegal) immigrants in France during the 1960s. In the final part of the novel, the child has become an adult and, with hindsight, she revisits this diasporic space with the purpose of showing the reader this intimate and often concealed reality.

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Move Over, Scopes and Other Writings both extends Julian Silva’s richly-textured portrait of Portuguese-American community life in his narrative diptych, Distant Music, and enlarges it to include subjects as varied as backbiting London theatre has-beens (“The Waxworks Show”), a final pilgrimage to the Brontë parsonage (“A Visit to Haworth”), and recollections of a Japanese-American babysitter interned following Pearl Harbor (“Kimi”). As always, Silva is fully attentive to descriptive detail and apt choice of metaphor—nowhere more so than in recalling livestock being raised and dispatched in “Coming to Terms with the Facts of Animal Life.”

The novella Move Over, Scopes, however, does it all, as Henry Ramos attempts to mollify fellow Portuguese-American Catholics—led by his own wife Louise—outraged over Estelle Dobson teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution. Twists and turns include machinations of a hotly contested School Board election and the need to resist Miss Dobson’s seductive appeal. At a time when Creationism may be making a come-back, Move Over, Scopes could not be more timely.