The Fourth Part of the World
The Epic Story of History's Greatest Map
Book
Paperback/Softback
480 pages
978-1-86197-893-6 (ISBN)
Description
The Waldseemueller Map of 1507 introduced an astonishing collection of cartological firsts. It was the first map to show the New World as a separate continent, alongside Europe, Africa and Asia - and the first on which the word 'America' appears. It was the first map to suggest the existence of the Pacific. It was, in short, the first map to depict the whole world as we know it today.
Beautiful, fascinating and revealing, it arrived on the scene as Europeans were moving out of the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, thanks to a tiny group of European cartographers who pieced together ideas going back to the ancients and through Marco Polo to Vespucci. In The Fourth Part of the World, Toby Lester charts the colourful history of this map, whose profound influence has been neglected for centuries and which changed the world-view of all humankind.
Beautiful, fascinating and revealing, it arrived on the scene as Europeans were moving out of the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, thanks to a tiny group of European cartographers who pieced together ideas going back to the ancients and through Marco Polo to Vespucci. In The Fourth Part of the World, Toby Lester charts the colourful history of this map, whose profound influence has been neglected for centuries and which changed the world-view of all humankind.
Reviews / Votes
Very impressive ... the best popular book on cartography, in fact, since Nicholas Crane's Mercator; and that is high praise indeed -- Noel Malcolm * Sunday Telegraph * Boundlessly engaging ... he tells the story not just of the map's creation, but pretty much the story of Europe's discovery and mapping of the entire world up to that point * Sunday Times * Lester's deftness in narrating a long and complex tale is impressive: fluent, clear, well informed, and perfectly paced. In short, he is an example of a phenomenon increasingly embarrassing to professional historians: a journalist who writes history better than we can. * Felipe Fernandez-Armesto * A page-turning story of the creation of what amounts to a sixteenth century Google Earth ... It inspired generations of explorers then and will inspire readers now -- Chris Anderson, author of The Long TailMore details
Edition
Main
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 135 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-86197-893-6 (9781861978936)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Toby Lester is a contributing editor to the Atlantic, where he has been a writer, staff editor senior editor, and deputy managing editor. This is his first book.