Customer Reviews

Terra Incognita: The True Story of How America Got Its Name

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If you think Amerigo Vespuci is the continents namesake, then you probably believe that Christopher Columbus discovered it as well. Wrong on both counts.

I held back a star only because I think I learned too much about the salt and fish trades than I needed to know to fully grasp the idea, but Rodney Broome wrote a well researched hard to dispute winner here. Very much worth the read.

TERRA INCOGNITA is the telling of history from another point of view, connecting the dots between voyages, ships, cargoes & paymasters.

If you like to know the who, why, when & how of historical things & events, then TERRA INCOGNITA will thrill you. Into this little book is packed a ton of trivia that is both fascinating & extra-ordinary, about the exploration of the world from the "Twelve Wooden Plates" upon which a new map was secured for printing & what Amerigo Vespucci had to do with them, to "The Commercial Revolution" in which the Black Plague had people sailing away in fleets to the farthest reaches of the globe, to "A Young Genoan Arrives in Bristol" being excerpts from journals of the icon of exploration to "Bristol Ships in Lisbon and Huelva" where Christopher Columbus had been dwelling, to "Shipshape and Bristol Fashion" wherein a medieval proverb comes to life & so on into the stuff of legends, all the facts & the fictions.

Very well done...a superb history of mapmakers & voyagers...certainly for every history buff, & anyone interested in writing about merchant seamen, explorers & maps.