"This debut book from Towns reconnects exploration history with one of its most unknowable subjects--John Cabot--about whom scholars have scarcely any reliable documentation. Until Towns's important intervention, we have been forced to wade through decades of scholarship bubbling with unfounded mythologies, untenable assumptions, and unimportant questions. Towns places Cabot's past in the context of a broader movement toward European expansionism in the centuries preceding his life alongside the public memory that has largely constructed him as an idealized explorer over the last two centuries. By revisiting sources produced in the 1490s, secondary literature, as well as archival materials from Canada, the UK, and the USA, Towns has produced a seminal work of scholarship centered on Cabot at his intersection with the Colombian lore with which he has become enmeshed. By understanding Cabot's own alliances and self-interests, Towns for the first time forays beyond superficial knowledge about the man to establish the depth of his involvement in European expansionism into North America. Of particular note is Towns's study of the contested memory of Cabot in the scholarly and public spheres.".