A long-time reporter for the Washington Post, where she was a winner of a shared Pulitzer Prize for the Post’s coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings, she is also the author of two books: “The Woman Behind the New Deal,” a biography of Frances Perkins, the architect of the New Deal, and “Isabella the Warrior Queen,” a biography of the queen who sponsored Christopher Columbus. Buy Isabella: The Warrior Queen online.Kirstin Downey, a local girl who went to Kailua High School and then Penn State University, is the Washington DC correspondent for Civil Beat, where she covers the federal government and how it affects Hawaii. Using new scholarship, Downey’s luminous biography tells the story of this brilliant, fervent, forgotten woman, the faith that propelled her through life, and the land of ancient conflicts and intrigue she brought under her command.Īuthor talk and book signing. Yet history has all but forgotten Isabella’s influence, due to hundreds of years of misreporting that often attributed her accomplishments to Ferdinand, the bold and philandering husband she adored. Whether saintly or satanic, no female leader has done more to shape our modern world, in which millions of people in two hemispheres speak Spanish and practice Catholicism. She also annihilated all who stood against her by establishing a bloody religious Inquisition that would darken Spain’s reputation for centuries.

She sponsored Columbus’s trip to the Indies and negotiated Spanish control over much of the New World with the help of Rodrigo Borgia, the infamous Pope Alexander VI.

She laid the foundation for a unified Spain. She ended a twenty-four-generation struggle between Muslims and Christians, forcing North African invaders back over the Mediterranean Sea.

In 1474, when most women were almost powerless, twenty-three-year-old Isabella defied a hostile brother and a mercurial husband to seize control of Castile and León. Part of a Pulitzer-winning team during her many years at The Washington Post, Downey follows her acclaimed biography of Frances Perkins with this compelling portrait of one of history’s most complex leaders.Īn engrossing and revolutionary biography of Isabella of Castile, the controversial Queen of Spain who sponsored Christopher Columbus’s journey to the New World, established the Spanish Inquisition, and became one of the most influential female rulers in history.īorn at a time when Christianity was dying out and the Ottoman Empire was aggressively expanding, Isabella was inspired in her youth by tales of Joan of Arc, a devout young woman who unified her people and led them to victory against foreign invaders.

Isabella by Kirstin Downey