The Fourth Part of the World: An Astonishing Epic of Global Discovery, Imperial Ambition, and the Birth of America Book PDF, ePub eBook

Join our eBook service for unlimited books & audiobooks. Get a free 7 day subscription! ↓↓↓↓↓


Book Descriptions:
“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 myth—until 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 Columbus’s 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 Vespucci’s 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 Lester’s telling the map comes alive: Marco Polo and the early Christian missionaries trek across Central Asia and China; Europe’s 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 humanity’s 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.

The Fourth Part of the World: An Astonishing Epic of Global Discovery, Imperial Ambition, and the Birth of America by Toby Lester

From reader reviews:

Joshua West:

The book The Fourth Part of the World: An Astonishing Epic of Global Discovery, Imperial Ambition, and the Birth of America give you a sense of feeling enjoy for your spare time. You need to use to make your capable considerably more increase. Book can being your best friend when you getting strain or having big problem together with your subject. If you can make reading through a book The Fourth Part of the World: An Astonishing Epic of Global Discovery, Imperial Ambition, and the Birth of America being your habit, you can get more advantages, like add your personal capable, increase your knowledge about a few or all subjects. It is possible to know everything if you like wide open and read a e-book The Fourth Part of the World: An Astonishing Epic of Global Discovery, Imperial Ambition, and the Birth of America. Kinds of book are a lot of. It means that, science publication or encyclopedia or some others. So , how do you think about this publication?

Theresa Adams:

What do you consider book? It is just for students because they're still students or it for all people in the world, the actual best subject for that? Simply you can be answered for that question above. Every person has different personality and hobby for every other. Don't to be forced someone or something that they don't desire do that. You must know how great and important the book The Fourth Part of the World: An Astonishing Epic of Global Discovery, Imperial Ambition, and the Birth of America. All type of book are you able to see on many solutions. You can look for the internet solutions or other social media.

Ray Ortiz:

Do you among people who can't read pleasant if the sentence chained inside straightway, hold on guys this particular aren't like that. This The Fourth Part of the World: An Astonishing Epic of Global Discovery, Imperial Ambition, and the Birth of America book is readable simply by you who hate those straight word style. You will find the info here are arrange for enjoyable studying experience without leaving perhaps decrease the knowledge that want to give to you. The writer connected with The Fourth Part of the World: An Astonishing Epic of Global Discovery, Imperial Ambition, and the Birth of America content conveys objective easily to understand by a lot of people. The printed and e-book are not different in the content material but it just different by means of it. So , do you even now thinking The Fourth Part of the World: An Astonishing Epic of Global Discovery, Imperial Ambition, and the Birth of America is not loveable to be your top checklist reading book?

Judy Bowen:

Many people spending their time period by playing outside together with friends, fun activity having family or just watching TV all day every day. You can have new activity to enjoy your whole day by reading through a book. Ugh, ya think reading a book really can hard because you have to accept the book everywhere? It fine you can have the e-book, taking everywhere you want in your Smartphone. Like The Fourth Part of the World: An Astonishing Epic of Global Discovery, Imperial Ambition, and the Birth of America which is obtaining the e-book version. So , why not try out this book? Let's notice.