Books: Martyr or Martinet?

CONQUEROR OF THE SEAS—Stefan Zweig —Viking ($3.50).

This is the second book on Magellan in two months. In Charles Ford's Death Sails With Magellan (TIME. Nov. 15) the ill-fated Portuguese navigator was portrayed as a cold-blooded martinet who double-crossed his best friends, intended to double-cross Spain and set up his own kingdom in the East Indies.

In Conqueror of the Seas Author Zweig admits that Magellan was a secretive, unpersonable dictator. But Magellan's voyage he calls "the most glorious Odyssey in the history of mankind." Magellan he defends as a sincere Christian whose ruthlessness was only an unavoidable means toward a great end....

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