The Fourth Part of the World: An Astonishing Epic of Global Discovery, Imperial Ambition, and the Birth of America
Amazon Exclusive: Simon Winchester ReviewsThe Fourth Part of the WorldSimon Winchesterstudied geology at Oxford and later became an  award-winning journalist, and author of more than a dozen books. He has written forThe Guardian,Smithsonian Magazine,National  Geographic, and has reviewed books forThe New York Times. His bestselling titles include:The  Man Who Loved China,The Professor and the Madman, andKrakatoa. The author divides his time between his home in Massachusetts and in the Western Isles of  Scotland. Read Simon Winchester’s exclusive Amazon guest review ofThe 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 calledthis 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 “on this last  voyage of mine…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 us…”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 nameAmerica.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 wasthere.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 namesNorth AmericaandSouth Americasquarely on the two halves of the fourth continent. And with that, the  name was secure; and it would never be changed again.Toby Lesterhas 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 fromThe Fourth Part of the WorldClick on image to  enlargeClick to discover the Waldseemüller map legendThis 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 moreThe portrait shown here is an idealized depiction of the  ancient Greek sage Claudius Ptolemy.Read moreThe portrait shown here, an obvious companion to the  portrait of Ptolemy to its left, is an idealized portrait of Amerigo Vespucci...Read moreHere, printed in block letters on what we know today as  Brazil, is the first use of the name America on a map.Read more--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.