The Fourth Part of the World : An Astonishing Epic of Global Discovery, Imperial Ambition, and the Birth of America (Paperback)

from multiplexer

I read history books the way others read genre fiction. Some of them are well-written and some not, some well-sourced and some not. Sometimes a book claiming to be a work of historical scholarship is actually a political screed. When I read one well-written, well-sourced, and about a subject not ...

from lmcclain

I don't read a lot of non-fiction, but this is one of the best books I have read in a long time. It reads like non-fiction, but the information is fascinating. It's really a history of the early mapmakers, but it has so much more.

from rodweston

This is an astonishing book that brought new perspective to me with respect to how the ancients and the Middle Ages Europeans viewed the world. The concept of another, hitherto unseen and unknown part of the world brought both eagerness and consternation to those Europeans whose entire world-view...

from DirkHurst

So much more than a story about a map. Or so much more of a story than you thought a map could tell. I'll have to go see the real thing at the Library of Congress sooner rather than later.

from tuckerresearch

It's relatively rare that I give a nonfiction book five stars, especially these days, when I've read most of the classic books. But here is Toby Lester's book, ostensibly about the Waldseemüller map of 1507, but it is about so much more. Lester is only a journalist, which makes many actual histor...