The Columbus materials express the rhetoric of exploration and discovery, especially the "Letter of Columbus to various persons describing the results of his first voyage and written on the return journey" (1493).

Audience: Who is he addressing this letter to?
Cuba: Is it an island or a mainland in his account?
What is at stake in persuading his readers one way or another?
What details seem fantastic or exaggerated?
Where have you seen the rhetoric of gold before?
What role does the editor, Cohen, play?

In his introduction, Cohen discusses his sources and he "frames" the materials that follow. Overall, Cohen's editing tends to deconstruct the notion that Columbus was aristocratic, heroic, or trustworthy; although he does concede that the explorer had a knack for dead reckoning.

Cohen discredits the idea that Columbus was well descended or that his family was originally Christian.  The editor entertains the idea that the Admiral may have been a converso, or converted Jew, and his point seems plausible when we consider his evidence that Columbus wrote in Spanish instead of Italian and that his "backers at court. . .were conversos."
Whatever his background, it is clear from Columbus's writing, as well as that by his son and various personalities on the voyages, that Conversion was one of the justifications for entry into "the New World."

Another of Cohen's ongoing concerns is that Columbus presented the Indies as if they were Asia.  More specifically, Cohen calls attention the moments in which Columbus read Cuba as Cathay or as Chipango/ Japan (71).