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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 (2009)

by Toby Lester(Favorite Author)

4.01 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1416535314 (ISBN13: 9781416535317)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Free Press

review 1: Fascinating. If you are interested in cartography and history this book has a lot to offer. How did the ancients see the world? How did explorations lead to changes in those views? These questions are answered in great detail. Academic, scholarly writings have a tendency to bog down at points. Fortunately for me, this only happened a few times when the author put more information in there about technical designs than what I cared for. For the most part it held my interest and made for a good read.
review 2: One of the most entertaining and informative books I've read in some time, can't say enough about how much I enjoyed reading it. Names from grade-school days like Vespucci, Marco Polo, Copernicus, Genghis Khan, da Gama and Columbus collide and come a... morelive here, their adventures, exploits and discoveries richly recounted and complemented by plenty of ancient maps and illustrations (The graphics are perhaps the best part of this book.) Our world is mapped and digitized to the extent one can know his/her location almost anywhere on the globe within a few feet. We've looked at finely-detailed maps and globes since we could walk. Space and the invisible microworlds are what come to (my) mind as the unknown frontiers. As noted recently in Outside magazine, GPS, the internet and other technologies have rendered the days of epic travel yarns and embellishments pretty much over. The Fourth Part of the World will let you imagine again, and discover the world beyond Europe one voyage, one map, many fables and tall tales at a time. Lester has written this book in such a way as to allow the reader to feel he/she is a part of the many adventures contained herein. Piece together the known world bit by bit, starting with maps speculating at the location of the "monstrous races" up through the first to use the term "America," the Waldseemuller map eventually purchased by the Library of Congress for ten million dollars. Highly, highly recommended. less

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