Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This is a wonderful book! The reader who enjoys history and exploration will enjoy this book, and should be recommended reading for anyone going into geo-spatial sciences.
As a classically trained cartographer (who learned before the advent of the personal computer and GIS (geographic information systems)), I could hardly put the book down. What really surprised me though, is that my wife picked it up and started reading it too. Once I wrestled it back from her I was able to finish it.

The book is captivating. It pieces together the snapshots in the European understanding of the world through many centuries and the events that lead to the transformation in that understanding. You do not need to be a historian to enjoy the book. It is probably the most rewarding book I read this year.
The only criticism I have about this book is that its picture of the European thought development is somewhat Europhilic. It practically ignores the significant influence of Arabic, Indian and Chinese thought on the European picture of the world, the mathematics needed to describe it and the technology to explore it.

Even as someone who loves history and nonfiction books generally, 'The Fourth Part of the World' is exceptional, a wonderfully written, very readable story, that filled in many gaps in my knowledge I would have eagerly sought to fill had I only known they existed. It's the book I give to map-o-phile friends as gifts (e.g. a colleague who is a pilot and loves marine charts, my father in law who studies maps at breakfast whenever our family is on vacation somewhere new...) and recommend when friends and colleagues ask "What good books have you read recently?"

This book is a book of discovery. It is wonderfully illustrated and follows a natural historical progression of
man's ability to look beyond and far and persevere for the good of man.
This should be required reading in high schools. It helps me understand the connection of the ancient greeks to our society today and also how christianity developed in the world. Thanks Mr. Lester for this wonderful book!

Phew, an extensive work by Mr. Lester; it took me a couple of months to finish reading this work. At time compelling to the point that I was mildly neglecting my studies and at others a comfortable tour through history, I thoroughly enjoyed the read. Having said that I do not believe that this is a must read like Mr. Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, although from a geographical history of the world it takes much the same style and readability.

The author traces the history of geography and discovery from a European viewpoint back to the Middle Ages up to the 16th century, referencing styles of mapping, discoverers, scholars and innovators that have brought the European and ultimately world view of our planet to its current state (admittedly the age of discovery continued and refinements were made but the structure was set and what followed consisted in large part in filling in the blanks). Like Bryson, referenced above, Toby Lester does not just recite the facts he tells a story, guessing at motivations and fleshing out the personalities as best he can with the available information.

The volume is annotated with numerous references and an extensive bibliography. It is illustrated throughout with a variety of maps illustrating the art of mapping pertinent to the age being discussed. The only shortcoming of the book is the lack of an index (at the least this is true of the ARC I read, and I hope that the final edition for publication includes one).

My bottom line is that while I enjoy reading history and I recognize that is not a topic on everyone's favorite list, I would recommend this to anyone with a passing interest in maps or the history of discovery. P-)