An excellent work. Russell's clear writing, solid scholarship, and general knowledge of the era, nation, and man provide for an excellent biography. This is, bar none, the best biography of Prince Henry of Portugal there is (and probably, will be for a long time). Russell takes the slender thread of information on Henry's personal life and extrapolates outward, never making strained judgement or off-the-wall contentions. There are more (but still spotty) records on Henry's official life as wouldbe crusader and actual sponsor of trading and exploring voyages in the eastern Atlantic, and Russell plumbs these deftly and ably.

Overall, Henry was not the "Navigator" or nineteenth-century historians (the Germans first gave him that name, the Brits picked it up and ran with it), nor was he a pre-Enlightenment Renaissance man-of-science-and-rationality. Henry, as Russell shows, was a late medieval crusader knight who just happened to be forward thinking enough and, this is important, desirous of fame enough to find ways to seek fame and money. And if that meant exploring and trading in the Atlantic and along the African coast, so be it. Of course, crusading and reconquest was his other goal, and exploring and trading fit into this too. If you can get around Islam and find the Christian Prester John in Ethiopia, you could attack Islam from the rear. So. Thus the twin moving factors of Henry's life, fight Islam and explore/trade, could be boiled down to "fight Islam," and, if we want to go one step further, it could be boiled down to: seek fame and fortune. Russell does a fine job of ferreting out and explaining Henry's motivations and can even explain them when they seem contradictory.

The exploration of the Atlantic is, for most readers, why they would pick up this book. They won't be disappointed. You will find here a great store of information on the boats heading south and west, the exploration of the African coast, the encounters with African peoples, etc. This is perhaps the best book in that regard, unless you want to sit down and read (assuming you can find) the volumes of Monumenta Henricina.

Two issues. There is but one map and a somewhat confusing family tree. The book could have stood to have a map of Portugal and separate one for the discoveries, each more detailed and helpful. The images were nice, but I would have liked to have had a discussion on the possibility that the portrait of Henry we've grown accustomed to, the one from the polyptych of S. Vicente de Fora, is not Henry. Only a doubt is mentioned in a caption. (See Wikipedia for what I'm talking about.) ( )

A decently competent biography, but it somehow doesn't particularly bring Henry alive. There's no discussion of his possible probable homosexuality notwithstanding frequent enough references to his "chastity" and his recognition fairly early in his life that he would never have any children, as a result of which he adopted a nephew as his legal son.

Prince Henry "the Navigator" might also be called Prince Henry "the Neocon," but a book published in the millennial year, before 9-11 and the Iraq War and the whole confused mess of U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century, understandably makes no allusion at all to such contemporary issues. Henry was a rabid crusader whose impulsive, militaristic policy toward Morocco created numerous foreign-policy problems for Portugal, including the death of his younger brother in Moroccan captivity; and his intransigent hostility toward Castille dashed his hopes to lead a crusade against then-Muslim Grenada.

Henry's African explorations were initially inspired by a desire for gold and then developed into a very profitable slave trade, but somehow there's no sense from Peter Russell's book just how "deliberate" versus "accidental" Henry's economic conquests were. Was his primary interest exploration, with the economic profits as a useful sideline? Was his primary interest economic profit, with the benefits of his exploratory labors accidentally accruing to Portugal's New World and African empires? Or was he inspired primarily by his crusading ambitions? Peter Russell sees a mix of motives, which is understandable in light of the limited evidence available as to Henry's private life and beliefs; but Russell seems not quite "up to" bringing Henry's character alive beyond the documentary evidence, sometimes limited, that is available. ( )