The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name | 
| Author: Toby Lester
Publisher: Free Press
Category: Book
List Price: $30.00
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Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 47,000
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 462
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 1.6
Dewey Decimal Number: 912.73
ASIN: B003NHR618
Publication Date: November 3, 2009
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Exclusive: Simon Winchester Reviews The Fourth Part of the World
Simon Winchester studied geology at Oxford and later became an award-winning journalist, and author of more than a dozen books. He has written for The Guardian, Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic, and has reviewed books for The New York Times. His bestselling titles include: The Man Who Loved China, The Professor and the Madman, and Krakatoa. The author divides his time between his home in Massachusetts and in the Western Isles of Scotland. Read Simon Winchesterâs exclusive Amazon guest review of The Fourth Part of the World:
Books about obscure and unobvious commercial subjects, written with passion by stylish enthusiasts, have come in recent years to provide us a canon of the most valuable and lasting literature. Toby Lester, who appears to be a master of the language and a man evidently as inquisitive as a ferret, has written a quite wonderful book about something that is, yes, obscure and unobvious commercial--but which is a tale quite vital to anyone interested in knowing the story of this country. It is about the naming of America, and the creation of a document that has been lately and justly called this country's birth-certificate. The document is a map--and so Mr. Lester's book is in essence about cartography, and sixteenth century cartography at that, a specialist's dream. But the tale of the making and then the hiding and the losing and the finding of this extraordinary and very large document--it called the Waldseemüller Map, and it now belongs to the Library of Congress--is sufficiently exciting to be almost unbearably thrilling. And anyone who can make cartography thrill deserves a medal, at the very least. The mapmakers in question were German: Martin Waldseemüller and his poetically-inclined colleague, Mathias Ringmann. Come the beginning of the sixteenth century, and working in southern France these two, like many in the European intellectual world, were beginning to hear rumors that a new continent had lately been found, halfway between Spain and Japan. (This was fifteen years after Columbus, who still had no clue what he had found in 1492--to his dying day he insisted that he had merely found a hitherto unknown piece of Asia.) The rumors swiftly became accepted fact: in the early 1500s the pair came across two printed accounts of the alleged new continent--accounts that were prolix, flamboyant, unreliable and in parts very saucy (there was material relating to the cosmetic self-mutilation, anal cleanliness and sexual practices of the locals) written by a colourful Italian explorer and sorcerer named Amerigo Vespucci. Crucially Vespucci claimed in one of these papers that âon this last voyage of mineâ¦I have discovered a continent in those southern regions that is inhabited by more numerous peoples than in our Europe, Asia or Africa, and in addition I found a more pleasant and temperate climate than in any other region known to usâ¦â As it happened, the mapmakers had already been commissioned to create a new world map--and so on it, they both agreed after reading Vespucci's accounts, they would now draw this new body of land, and they would give it a name. After some head-scratching they agreed the name should be the feminine form of the Latinised version of Amerigo Vespucci's Christian name: the properly feminine place-nouns of Africa, Asia and Europe would now be joined, quite simply, by a brand-new entity that they would name America. And so, in 1507, their map was duly published; and in large letters across the southern half of the southern continental discovery, just where Brazil is situated today, was the single word: America. It was written in majuscule script, was a tiny bit crooked, curiously out of scale and looking a little last-minute and just a little tentative--but nevertheless and incontrovertibly, it was there. It caught on: a globe published in Paris in 1515 placed the word on both segments of the continent, north and south. The word was published in many books in central Europe--Strasbourg in 1509, Poland in 1512, Vienna in 1520; it was found in a Spanish book in 1520. In Strasbourg, five years later, another book lists 'America' as one of the world's regions and finally, in 1538, Mercator, the new arbiter of the planet's geography, placed the names North America and South America squarely on the two halves of the fourth continent. And with that, the name was secure; and it would never be changed again. Toby Lester has done American history the greatest service by writing this elegant and thoughtful account of the one morsel of cartographic history that would shake the world's foundations. We are told that this is his first book: may we hope that he writes many more, for his is a rare and masterly talent. --SW (Photo © Setsuko Winchester)
Discover the Waldseemüller World Map from The Fourth Part of the World
Click on image to enlarge
Click to discover the Waldseemüller map legend |
This legend highlights an idea that's almost completely forgotten today: that the New World was remarkable to Europeans in 1507 because it lay not just to the west but also to the south. Read more | 
The portrait shown here is an idealized depiction of the ancient Greek sage Claudius Ptolemy. Read more | 
The portrait shown here, an obvious companion to the portrait of Ptolemy to its left, is an idealized portrait of Amerigo Vespucci...Read more | 
Here, printed in block letters on what we know today as Brazil, is the first use of the name America on a map. Read more |
Product Description
"Old maps lead you to strange and unexpected places, and none does so more ineluctably than the subject of this book: the giant, beguiling Waldseemüller world map of 1507." So begins this remarkable story of the map that gave America its name. For millennia Europeans believed that the world consisted of three parts: Europe, Africa, and Asia. They drew the three continents in countless shapes and sizes on their maps, but occasionally they hinted at the existence of a "fourth part of the world," a mysterious, inaccessible place, separated from the rest by a vast expanse of ocean. It was a land of mythâuntil 1507, that is, when Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann, two obscure scholars working in the mountains of eastern France, made it real. Columbus had died the year before convinced that he had sailed to Asia, but Waldseemüller and Ringmann, after reading about the Atlantic discoveries of Columbusâs contemporary Amerigo Vespucci, came to a startling conclusion: Vespucci had reached the fourth part of the world. To celebrate his achievement, Waldseemüller and Ringmann printed a huge map, for the first time showing the New World surrounded by water and distinct from Asia, and in Vespucciâs honor they gave this New World a name: America.
The Fourth Part of the World is the story behind that map, a thrilling saga of geographical and intellectual exploration, full of outsize thinkers and voyages. Taking a kaleidoscopic approach, Toby Lester traces the origins of our modern worldview. His narrative sweeps across continents and centuries, zeroing in on different portions of the map to reveal strands of ancient legend, Biblical prophecy, classical learning, medieval exploration, imperial ambitions, and more. In Lesterâs telling the map comes alive: Marco Polo and the early Christian missionaries trek across Central Asia and China; Europeâs early humanists travel to monastic libraries to recover ancient texts; Portuguese merchants round up the first West African slaves; Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci make their epic voyages of discovery; and finally, vitally, Nicholas Copernicus makes an appearance, deducing from the new geography shown on the Waldseemüller map that the earth could not lie at the center of the cosmos. The map literally altered humanityâs worldview. One thousand copies of the map were printed, yet only one remains. Discovered accidentally in 1901 in the library of a German castle it was bought in 2003 for the unprecedented sum of $10 million by the Library of Congress, where it is now on permanent public display. Lavishly illustrated with rare maps and diagrams, The Fourth Part of the World is the story of that map: the dazzling story of the geographical and intellectual journeys that have helped us decipher our world.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 20
Enticing November 12, 2009
Chris Thompson (Nevis, West Indies)
55 out of 57 found this review helpful
Simon Winchester's review above does not give this book justice, although I must say that Lester's ability to spin a great story around an arcane subject may rival Winchester's. To me this book is about so much more than the naming of America on a map - it is really about the process of discovery and enlightenment and the pitfalls and pratfalls along the way. I ordered the book in an attempt to research an even more arcane issue I did not find in the book, but was immediately captivated by the exposition, and set my current book aside to read this to completion.
The title of the book could maybe not be more cryptic or off-putting, but don't let that deter you. The Fourth Part of the World refers to the somewhat mythical, yet actual undiscovered lands (after Asia, Europe and Africa) described by the ancients which we know now as America. Lester spins an exhaustively researched yet page-turning story of how this mythical land was gradually given substance and shape by explorers and cartographers. That the mapmakers at the center of the story write "America" on their map is almost incidental to the story. The great story, which Lester tells so wonderfully well, is how incredibly important world maps effected the philosophy of the day. Lester makes the case that it was this map that caused Copernicus to form his theory of the Universe, which if true, is far more significant than simply naming America.
For the average reader like me, this book will fill in a lot of the gaps in your learning about the age of exploration, and possibly give insight to the shortfalls and missteps we continue to repeat while exploring new domains without the proper "map".
"The Fourth Part of the World" is truly not an arcane subject, and it's a wonderful read.
The map that named America November 27, 2009
S. McGee (New York, NY)
30 out of 33 found this review helpful
A six-star book, and one of my favorite book discoveries of the year. This is the kind of book that makes me wish that Amazon allowed us to award an extra bonus star to truly outstanding works.
Remember all those hours we all spent in classrooms, at least one of which had a world map spread out across one wall, and how familiar that world came to look to us, with the Atlantic separating the Americas from the vast landmass of Europe and Asia, and Africa extending south between the Atlantic and Indian oceans? Well, in this fascinating and lively history, Toby Lester tells us how -- over the course of many centuries -- that map and the shape of the world it presents came to be understood and accepted, and how slowly and painfully that process was. Even more intriguing, it's the story of how a world view evolved over even more centuries; of how Europeans who once saw themselves as inhabiting a tiny island surrounding by vast amounts of ocean, with Jerusalem -- as their holy city -- at its center, came to understand the implications of voyages of discovery on foot, horseback and eventually by sea for their view of geographical reality.
Travelers began to venture from Europe into unknown lands centuries before the map at the heart of this book that first identified America as a separate continent and named it after Amerigo Vespucci was first printed in eastern France in 1507. Those who came back -- Papal envoys from the Mongol court, Marco Polo from China and the East Indies -- had wondrous tales to spin -- but where, exactly, was it that they had been? Mapmakers scrambled to keep up. Sometimes the works of these early geographers owe more to invention than to what we now know to be true; sometimes they were able to make big leaps forward after significant voyages of discovery such as those of the Portuguese explorers down the African coast, or of the rediscovery of ancient geographical tomes, such as Petrarch's copy of the earliest Latin geographical work ever found by Pomponious Mela.
We may all know the story of Columbus and other 15th and early 16th century explorers and their voyages, but what I found fascinating to read about were those that had taken place centuries earlier, such as voyages by Italian mariners commissioned by the Portuguese king in the mid-1300s to set off in search of some islands believed to exist somewhere in the Atlantic. They ended up discovering the Canary Islands (as they are now known today) and proceeded to pillage, loot and take prisoners home with them in hopes of converting them to Christianity. (Setting a pattern that would repeat itself on a vaster scale centuries later, as Lester points out.)
In the world we live in today, where there are no significant undiscovered lands and few major geographical puzzles left to solve, this book is particularly enticing. It put me squarely back in the minds of these medieval and Renaissance travelers, scholars and mapmakers as they struggled to put together a jigsaw puzzle to which half the pieces were still missing, and produce an accurate view of the world they were still discovering. Following in their footsteps was exhilarating, thanks both to the facts themselves and to Lester's extremely knowledgeable but always lively writing. While Lester does great work in making the process of map-making itself understandable, he doesn't shun the livelier bits and pieces of the story, such as the way "Mongol chic" spread through western Europe the late 13th and early 14th centuries. (Italian parents even named their sons after Mongol khans!)
This book was sheer delight to read, as it combines intellectual history (the story of the transmission of knowledge and of how new discoveries were incorporated into and transformed the way people viewed their world), science (the art of navigation and marine map-making, for instance) and the stories of the explorers, both those whose curiosity could be pursued only from the medieveal version of an armchair as well as those like Columbus and Vespucci who took the helm of their ships and sailed off into the unknown. (I confess I particularly enjoyed the attention given to some of the more obscure figures, from the mapmakers who finally produced the map bearing the label 'America' to early 14th century Papal scholar Poggio Bracciolini, long a favorite historical character of mine for his intrepid book-hunting expeditions.)
This is a story that may owe its existence to a map but which stretches far beyond that, to tell the story of how we learned to learn about and think about the world we inhabit. It's an ambitious book, but one that will promptly be added to my "top 100" books; the volumes I don't ever want to be without. It will appeal most readily to those with an interest in history and exploration, but I defy anyone to read it and not immediately set off in search of more reading on the topic. (For anyone who hasn't already read it, Daniel Boorstin's The Discoverers is a good overview book, although it doesn't pack the same kind of wallop as this one.) On a bit of a tangent, if you enjoyed this, you might find Island of Lost Maps, (True Story) by Miles Harvey to be intriguing, as it's the tale of how much today's collectors cherish some of these very early maps and the crimes they will commit to possess them.
Highly, highly recommended. If I could put it more strongly than that, I would.
my favorite book of the year November 22, 2009
lifetime learner (District of Columbia, District of Columbia USA)
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
This is my favorite book of the year. I am giving it to friends and family for Christmas. It is the story of the map that named America -- a remarkable map that is now the central feature in the lobby of the Library of Congress in Washington. But, told engagingly by Toby Lester, it is also a story of intrigue, deception, sex, and bribery -- the story of competition among early explorers and their patrons to find and document ( and mis-document) new worlds. A remarkable achievement.
Great Stories, Fabulous Writing, Grand Theme May 29, 2010
Minnow (Glen Echo, MD USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The Fourth Part of the World is a 300 year journey (~1200 to ~1500) that tells the story of how Medieval Europe came from thinking of the world as, literally, a "T" inscribed within a circle (how bizarre is that) to thinking about it as we do now. That process of intellectual and physical discovery involved many curious characters mixing it up with history in wonderful ways. Toby Lester loves a good story and writes it vividly. For example, Mr. Lester clearly feels it's no fun at all to say, "Leading humanists acquired a copy of Ptolemy's Geography in 1397" and leave it at that. Wikipedia can do as well. Mr. Lester wants to tell us 'how' that book gets to Florence, and then uses his sparking prose to polish and cut a gem of a story.
We learn about how Florence's humanist Chancellor, Salutati sent an aspiring student of Greek, Jacopo Angeli da Scarperi, to slip into Constantinople, currently being besieged by the Turks, to lure Manuel Chrysoloras to Italy to teach the Florentines Greek. Chrysoloras takes the job, escapes the city and brings a copy of Ptolemy's Geography with him. Within a few pages, personalities are developed, motives explored, and actions are set firmly into the overarching story of how America got its name. He relates these gems page after page; it's a winning formula that keeps the reader entertained from start to finish.
This is not to say that Mr. Lester neglects the forest for the trees, for he brings it all into focus -- his thoughts on the larger picture are just as interesting and help you keep the arc of the story in mind even as your read about an fat friar who rode across thousands of miles of steppes to parlay with the Great Khan...
I think that Mr. Lester, a lover of language, enjoys himself most when he's trying to puzzle together the reasons why we live in "America" not "Amerigo" or "Vespucci" or "Colon" or "Colombo" or "Cristobal." I raise my glass to the mapmakers Ringmann & Waldseemüller because I'm really happy I don't live in the United States of Vespucci and don't have to sing, "Vespucci, Vespucci, God shed his grace on thee" before every baseball game.
A couple of things to know if you're thinking of buying this book: the color plates in the hardcover edition are difficult to find in the rough-cut pages -- they're between pages 272 & 273. The book does not mention this, but the website [...] enables you to explore the Waldseemüller map in ways impossible through prose. That's helpful because the maps in the book are necessarily much smaller than the originals. If Simon & Schuster publishes the book as an e-book, it would do well to integrate much higher resolution color images of the maps mentioned.
A fascinating intellectual journey January 15, 2010
Bruce Trinque (Amston, CT United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In "The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name" Toby Lester uses an obscure map published in 1507 as a springboard to tell a fascinating tale of Medieval maps and exploration. The quest of Medieval Europe to define the world through an adequate map is closely aligned to the quest to explore that world first-hand. Maps and exploration fed one another: new discoveries revising old maps, maps encouraging explorers to look a little harder. Lester shows how various threads of knowledge -- ancient sources such as Ptolemy, philosophical excercises in what the world should look be to reflect religious understanding, marine charts showing coastlines from decades and centuries of practical experience, and reports fresh from wandering explorers -- came together to make possible the first maps to approximate a modern understanding of what the world really looked like.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 20
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