书名：1421:The Year China Discovered the World  1421中国发现世界

作者：Gavin Menzies 
出版社名称：Bantam
出版时间：2003
语种：英语
ISBN：9780553815221
商品尺寸：12.7 x 4.2 x 19.8 cm
包装：平装
页数：650（以实物为准）
这是一部可能改写世界历史的惊人之作

1421──明成祖永乐十九年

中国人发现美洲大陆，早于哥伦布七十年；

中国人发现澳洲，先于库克船长三百五十年；

中国人解决计算经度的问题，远早于欧洲三个世纪；

中国人到达麦哲伦海峡，比麦哲伦的出生还早一个甲子。

作者加文·孟席斯(GavlrI Merlzles)花了14年时间研究这段中国船队惊人的传奇之旅。他应用得天独厚的天文导航绘图以及航海专业知识，广泛搜集古地图、东西方断简残篇的证据，用以支持自己的论点，成功地解释了近年所发现的中国船队沿路留下的遗物与碑文，以及中途的沉船，还有水手在各地祭拜妈祖的遗址。

On 8 March 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. The ships, some nearly five hundred feet long, were under the command of Emperor Zhu Di's loyal eunuch admirals. Their mission was 'to proceed all the way to the end of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas' and unite the world in Confucian harmony.

Their journey would last for over two years and take them around the globe but by the time they returned home, China was beginning its long, self-imposed isolation from the world it had so recently embraced. And so the great ships were left to rot and the records of their journey were destroyed. And with them, the knowledge that the Chinese had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan, reached America seventy years before Columbus, and Australia three hundred and fifty years before Cook...

The result of fifteen years research, 1421 is Gavin Menzies' enthralling account of the voyage of the Chinese fleet, the remarkable discoveries he made and the persuasive evidence to support them: ancient maps, precise navigational knowledge, astronomy and the surviving accounts of Chinese explorers and the later European navigators as well as the traces the fleet left behind - from sunken junks to the votive offerings left by the Chinese sailors wherever they landed, giving thanks to Shao Lin, goddess of the sea.

Already hailed as a classic, this is the story of an extraordinary journey of discovery that not only radically alters our understanding of world exploration but also rewrites history itself.

Gavin Menzies(Royal Navy Submarine Commanding Officer, retired) was born in 1937 in China, where he spent the first two years of his life. He joined the Royal Navy in 1953 and served in submarines from 1959 to 1970. As a junior officer he sailed the world in the wake of Columbus, Dias, Cabral and Vasco da Gama. When in command of HMS Rorqual (1968-1970), he sailed the routes pioneered by Magellan and Captain Cook. Since leaving the Royal Navy, he has returned to China and the Far East many times, and in the course of researching 1421 he has visited 120 countries, over 900 museums and libraries and every major sea port of the late Middle Ages.