Three men; three voyages; one century. This book is about the beginning of the modern global order which was created around 1500 in one of the most marginal countries in Europe. The Black Ships were the engines of the voyages of discovery, which linked Europe to Asia for the first time. The brutal men who sailed these ships were excited by neither the search for unknown lands nor by scientific curiosity, but by the deadly contest between Christian and Muslim that consumed Europe for nearly a thousand years. The men of Portugal determined that they would engage in the greatest and final crusade: to rid the world of Islam. To do so, they forged new technologies that enabled them to cross oceans. They never quite achieved their aims. But they changed the world.