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 [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Toby Lester (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 3, 2009

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.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

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 Winchester’s 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 “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 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)

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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

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From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. With the excitement and exhilaration of an explorer, Atlantic contributor Lester sets off on his own journey of discovery across the seas of cartography and history. In 2003, the Library of Congress paid $10 million for the only existing copy of the 1507 map that was the first to show the New World and call it America. Lester ranges over the history of cartography, such as the zonal maps of the Middle Ages that divided the world into three parts—Africa, Europe and Asia. In 1507, Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann, working with a small group of scholars in a small town in eastern France produced their map, based on Amerigo Vespucci's voyages to the West and discovery of South America. In just a few decades the Waldseemüller map was out of date, but its world-changing status lived on, and in 1901 a Jesuit priest, poking around a small German castle, stumbled on a copy. Lester traces the map's journey to America over the next century in a majestic tribute to a historic work. First serial to Smithsonian magazine. (Nov. 3)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; 1ST edition (November 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416535314
• ISBN-13: 978-1416535317
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,307 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #2 in Books > Education & Reference > Atlases & Maps > United States
  • #3 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Earth Sciences > Cartography

More About the Author

Toby Lester is a contributing editor to and has written extensively for The Atlantic. A former Peace Corps volunteer and United Nations observer, he lives in the Boston area with his wife and three daughters. His previous book, The Fourth Part of the World (2009), about the map that gave America its name, was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers Award and was picked as a Book of the Year by several other publications. His work has also appeared on the radio program This American Life.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

75 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enticing, November 11, 2009

By 

Chris Thompson (Nevis, West Indies) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: 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 (Hardcover)

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.

46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The map that named America, November 26, 2009

By 

S. McGee (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: 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 (Hardcover)

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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.

32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An entertaining and enlightening book, November 18, 2009

By 

Kurt A. Johnson (North-Central Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: 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 (Hardcover)

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In 1507, German cartographer Martin Waldseemuller drew up a new world map, based on the latest reports of world geography, including the reports provided by the Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci. In 2001, a copy of the Waldseemuller Map was presented to the American Library of Congress, where it was dubbed "America's birth certificate." Using the map as a springboard, the author of this book takes the reader through the history of cartography (not as old as you might think), and the history of the world.

This book is part of a fairly common modern genre - books that take a subject, large or small, and while discussing that subject use it as a springboard to talk about a wide range of tangential subjects. In this case, the story of Waldseemuller Map is discussed in a workmanlike manner, and along the way the reader is treated to discussions of the history of Western man's knowledge of the East, when the name "America" was coined for the New World, and so much more. It's rather an entertaining and enlightening book, one that discusses a lot of interesting things about world history, and the history of exploration.