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

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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

by Toby Lester (Goodreads Author)

3.97 of 5 stars 3.97 · rating details · 437 ratings · 112 reviews

For millennia Europeans believed that the world consisted of three parts: Europe, Africa, and Asia. They drew the three continents i

...more "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.

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Hardcover, 480 pages

Published November 3rd 2009 by Free Press

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Dec 17, 2009 Jeff rated it 4 of 5 stars

'The Fourth Part of the World', Toby Lester, 2009. All to often, the keepers of knowledge, -the academics, intellectuals and scholars, are sadly crippled by verbose, pompous, unreadable writing skills. Occasionally It takes an outsider, a professional writer such as Toby Lester, to attack a subject with freshness and enthusiasm. The catalyst for "The Forth Part of The World" was the purchase by The Library of Congress of the Waldseemuller world map of 1507, for the incredible sum of ten million...more

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Sep 30, 2011 Jay rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is one of those books calculated to warm the heart of a cartographer and excite the pulse of an historian. Since I am both, I loved it! It's like one of those Simon Winchester books that takes many seemingly unrelated events and people, and shows how they came together to produce a history-changing result.

The book purports to be the story of the 1517 Waldseemüller map, on which the name "America" was first applied to the New World. In fact, it's the history of the way Europe's perception of...more

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Sep 20, 2011 Jolene rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is my first reading of a non fiction book and I really enjoyed it. Possibly because I just visited the Library of Congress and saw the WALDSEEMULLER Map. My guide recommended this book because it tells the story of how the map came about and how it was found. Research revealed that the map had been made but no one could find one. People hunted for one for hundreds of years until one was finally found in 1901 in an obscure castle in Germany. Finally in 2007, USA paid 1 million dollars for it...more

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May 29, 2011 Emily rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: general-history, non-fiction

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 often tread, I am in my happy place. The Fourth Part of the World is one of those books and it's about maps.

To be precise, it is about one map: the first map in the world to name the New World "America."...more 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 often tread, I am in my happy place. The Fourth Part of the World is one of those books and it's about maps.

To be precise, it is about one map: the first map in the world to name the New World "America." But to get to that point, one has to go back in time and start with the Medieval maps of the 12th century and slowly move the clock forward through the Golden Horde and the Crusades. The Travels of Marco Polo and "the Book" -- no authoritative version of the travels of Marco Polo exists but any number of versions await a reader's pleasure. The endless fascination and eternal quest to find Prester John, an imaginary king with an imaginary army waiting just over the hills to come to the assistance of the Crusaders and who existed in every unexplored corner of every map. The re-discovery of Greek in Western Europe, lost for a thousand years, and the translation of Claudius Ptolemy's Geographie, a book with instructions on how to draw maps, described latitude and longitude, and with 8000 places in the ancient world. Great convocations on religious matters where men of learning got together and, for the first time in dark rooms, discussed the forgotten philosophies and mathematics of the ancient world as they were feverishly translated, and exchanged books. The printing press. The invention of the Caravel. Dreams of Japan. The Portuguese and Africa and what they found there. The first trip around the Cape of Good Hope. The men of Bristol who saw something, once, a long stretch of coastline while chasing schools of cod. Columbus. John Cabot. Amerigo Vespucci. de Medicis and Papal Spies and secret societies of Royal mapmakers and the quest for the way to India. Lies and false letters and Monarchies jostling to lay hands on the New World.

And it all comes together with two men in a small town outside of Strassburg, one a philosopher and one a cartographer, who had access to a printing press, a stolen map of the New World, and a set of forged letters full of imaginary extra adventures of Amerigo Vespucci. They fell in love with the alliteration of Africa and Asia and Europe and, with small metal letters and newly translated Latin poetry in their heads, named the new world America. It was a best seller for twenty years but maps being what maps are and they wore out as new ones appeared. The map disappeared from the face of the Earth until one copy complete, in tact, and whole, found... and now in the Library of Congress.

The book ends with a very nice touch of the impact of the maps of the New World on Nicolaus Copernicus who quotes much of the intro text to the first true world map in his On the Revolutions. It leaves proof that, while perhaps not all of his theories of the Earth revolving around the Sun came from this source, it had bearing on his thinking. With the Fourth Part of the World, the old Aristotelean view of the world no longer worked. And if it didn't work, what else about how the world worked was outright wrong.

The Fourth Part of the World is terrific. For anyone interested in the history of maps and learning in Western Europe, or the Age of Discovery, I can completely recommend this book. It's a fun read, it's well written, it's incredibly well sourced, it is full of pictures of maps to help with the text, and it's all around great.

Fantastic. An easy 5 star rating.

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Sep 28, 2010 N E White rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I recently finished 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 by Toby Lester. Though this is Toby's first book, he has been writing for a very long time on religion, history, and maps. He has done a magnificent job with this book.

The Fourth Part is a hefty tome. At 462 pages (hardback edition - yes, it's worth it), including an index and notes, one might think a book so long about one map would be a slog to get throu...more

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Sep 19, 2010 Emily rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010

This is a detailed history of the paired development of geography and cartography through the middle ages, the Renaissance rediscovery of classical texts, the so-called "Age of Discovery," and the early 16th century. I bookmarked too many pages containing interesting facts and insights to be able to share them.

The conventional wisdom about what Europeans did and didn't know about the earth is picked apart here. As with so many issues of the early modern era, we see a bizarre juxtaposition of th...more

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Jan 03, 2010 Kate rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: library, read-in-2010

This books is supposedly about the 1507 German map that used the word "America" for the first time, but it's actually about a lot more than that, and almost all of it is fascinating. It tries to tell the story of pretty much everything that led up to the creation of this map, which means the entire history of European (and some Asian) exploration, cartography, geography, and a fair amount of theology and philosophy from ancient times through the 1500s. Aside from the obvious elements such as Pto...more

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Nov 06, 2009 Hilary rated it 5 of 5 stars

I love this book--in the interest of full disclosure I edited it at the Free Press--but I've been crazy about it since I saw the proposal ages ago. When the Library of Congress bought the 1507 Waldseemüller map from the German government for $10 million, they sent out a press release that crossed Toby’s desk at the Atlantic where he was Deputy managing editor. He thought the map’s drawing and rediscovery after four centuries might make a nice little article, even a short book, but closer examina...more

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Jul 26, 2011 Carolyn Sill rated it 5 of 5 stars

This was a wonderfully written book, based on the Waldseemuller world map of 1507, and the many stories leading up to it and stemming from it. It beautifully melds the art of cartography, Christian evangelism, European empirialism, and the human desire to explore the unknown. The book takes us from a static, flat, "three-part" world (Europe, Asia and Africa) at the center of a universe that revolves around the earth, to a "four-part" world (which includes the Americas) in which a spherical earth...more

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Feb 18, 2010 Jim Good rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

The book starts by providing a history of the recovery of the 1507 Waldseemuller map of the world that is the first to use America to name the landmass being discovered in the southern hemisphere, west of Europa. Using the map as a starting point, Lester undertakes to describe the foundations of the different regions depicted on the map by chronicling the European’s voyage of discovery in each.

In so doing he tells of early legends and beliefs the European’s had of the east (Gog & Magog, Pre...more

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Feb 26, 2012 Tony rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-nature

I decided not to travel just once on a very long journey by ship or on horse or on foot to those lands, but many times on a tiny map with books and the imagination. -- Petrarch

Well, I am often that way. And this book did take me places and show me things. I learned that the 'silk trade involved vast amounts of labor and expense and travel for the singularly frivolous purpose,' according to Pliny the Elder, 'to enable the Roman maiden to flaunt transparent clothing in public.' I'm guessing Pliny...more

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Mar 29, 2010 William Blair rated it 5 of 5 stars

It seems like every book I read lately about subject X tells me more than I thought I wanted to know about subject Y. Of course, this should be expected in any book that deals with history, but I figured this one would be about the map in question (the one that first designated what we now call North America and South America as "America"), who produced it, and then what happened to it. The short version is that some guy made a map, setting out to make a better one given that everybody who count...more It seems like every book I read lately about subject X tells me more than I thought I wanted to know about subject Y. Of course, this should be expected in any book that deals with history, but I figured this one would be about the map in question (the one that first designated what we now call North America and South America as "America"), who produced it, and then what happened to it. The short version is that some guy made a map, setting out to make a better one given that everybody who counted knew the Earth was round, and -- probably incorrectly -- labeled the land masses in the Western Hemisphere "America" based on some fake letters copied by unscrupulous book printers that claimed that Amerigo Vespucci had made ocean voyages to them, potentially before Columbus. Of course, we now know (the historians having done their research) that this is not likely to have happened, but the fact remains that that "America" label stuck because the map they made was so good. Eventually, all copies were lost, save one, which was found at the very end of the 19th century; it was purchased by the United States and now resides in the National Archives (and deservedly so). But the book is not simply about that, or all that happened accidentally (as most history is) to make all that come to pass. The author discerned the need to explain why the players in the game acted as they did, and in order to do that, he had to tell a lot of other history. And that's what makes this book so interesting. It's not about a map. It's really about map-making, and mapmakers, and the rise of rationalism in the period we now call the Renaissance. But, even if you're not a history buff, even if you're just curious about time, calendars, and maps (especially old ones), or European and early American History, you will enjoy reading this book. Ostensibly about a specific map, it's really about how the actual knowledge of what land masses are where on the Earth (and what it would looks like from space! -- remember that in order to actually see what you see today when you look at a globe map of the Earth you'd have to actually be 50,000 or so miles away from Earth in space!) and who lives there came to be discovered ... and mapped. If you liked Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, you'll like this one as well. But even if you're just a history geek or a math nerd, this will be a real page-turner. (less)

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Dec 06, 2011 Tuck rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: natural-history, spain

a fantastic book on the history of the Waldseemuller map and much much more. Looks at maps and humanists from 1200's to 1500's, delves into the movement of people both physically and intellectually plus so much more. as simon winchester says in blurb "lester..create[s] a masterpiece of cartographic literature that will be of lasting importance". agreed by little ol me (though he DOES only concentrate on european maps and intellectual history to the detriment of all other ideas, from say asia, af...more

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Jul 24, 2010 Diane Paoni rated it 1 of 5 stars

I was surprised to find this book uninteresting. My undergraduate degree is in geography so I have a nerdy fascination with the age of exploration and what maps mean to it.

The author takes forever to make a point and then repeats it in several, indistinguishable paragraphs. His treatment of how a lost book of significance was found again reads like a doctoral thesis. If you're looking for a book that explores the question of whether Christopher Columbus was the first (European) to sail to (Sout...more

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Jul 16, 2011 Don rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history

In reading this book, I felt at times like I was getting all the crap from a bunch of classes and textbooks distilled into "here's you really need to know to understand, and why it is important, and how it is connected, and written as a story with a plot and climax." The whole time I found myself wondering, not just "how does this guy know all this stuff, but how in the world did he decide what to put in, what to leave out, what to emphasize?"

This is really quite a book. Toby Lester has a style...more

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Jul 20, 2011 Lorinda rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I could hardly put this book down. Even though we know the story of the Age of Exploration, Toby Lester puts it all into the context of the early Renaissance. He keeps the story moving along even though there is a great deal of detail. I like non fiction and I like maps, so it's no wonder I loved this book. It also includes a timeline and a cast of characters, notes to each chapter, a list of works cited and a good index. There are 82 black and white Figures and 11 Plates in color. I kept wishin...more

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May 16, 2010 Christopher rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, cartography-maps

The description of this book is focused on the Waldseemuller map and the adventures of America's namesake, Amerigo Vespucci. That's part of the story here, but really the book is broader than that.

This book is mainly a history of cartography in Europe from the Middle Ages until the early 1500's. Boring, right? Not for me. The history talks about what passed for world maps in the Dark Ages when the Church dictated that Jerusalem was the 'navel of the world' and all land in the world was divided i...more

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Apr 14, 2010 Gary Brecht rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Fourth Part of the World by Toby Lester

A book about a subject like cartography might initially seem unappealing. I mean, how interesting could a book about maps be? In fact, this book by Toby Lester turned out to be a fascinating read. In it I learned that the medieval conception of the world was always depicted by so called T.O. maps (a circle enclosing a large “T”) which portrayed the known world as consisting of three parts. It was commonly believed that anything below the equator was uni...more

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Nov 29, 2009 Jenny J rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, read-in-2009

A delicious, well-written book about the history of map-making as it relates to the "discovery" of the Americas. The author begins by introducing the most expensive historical document ever purchased publicly: the Waldseemuller map of 1507 (the first map to label "America" as such)--bought by the Library of Congress for 10 million dollars--2 million more than was paid for the Declaration of Independence...

From there, the author discusses the history of maps, from ancient times through the invent...more

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Dec 08, 2009 Michelle rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

At first I wondered how Lester was going to fill 400 pages with the story of the Waldseemuller map. I'm glad I stuck around to find out--instead of just the story of a map, I was treated to a wonderful exploration of an evolving worldview--just HOW our modern conception of the continents began to dawn upon the Europeans in the beginning of the age of exploration. From Mongol hordes to monasteries, humanists to self-promoting explorers, Lester lays it all out with style. Very rewarding 400 pages...more

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Oct 07, 2010 Jean-Paul Adriaansen rated it 3 of 5 stars

What a perfect book for history lovers! The basic subject of this work is the discovery of a map dated 1507 on which for the very first time the continent of North-America appears with the name “America”. More fascinating even is the fact that on this map, America is surrounded by oceans … how could they know?
In search for the origins of this knowledge Toby Lester shows us not only the whole history of cartography (even going back to Ptolemy) but he describes also the entire political and religi...more

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Feb 08, 2010 Bookmarks Magazine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mar-apr-2010

Many reviewers stressed early on that Lester's book offers more of a historical detective story than a narrative built around exciting characters of the past. But they were also consistently impressed with the way he could draw in readers by bringing together what might otherwise seem to be a miscellaneous collection of observations and tales. Above all, critics came away impressed with the way that all maps provide insight into the character of a culture. All the more true, then, for one as imp...more

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Jan 14, 2010 Tobi rated it 3 of 5 stars

Think you know how America got it's name? I bet you don't. Still think Columbus discovered America? He didn't. Want to know the history of the world and exploration? Then read this book. It is an intense and through history of the world really. Based around the story of the first map to show the Americas, the Waldseemuller Map of 1507, this book tells so much more. Invasions, wars, Mongols, Popes, Kings, Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci and more. It not a dull text book type history but an exciting an...more

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Nov 03, 2010 Marvin Goodman rated it 3 of 5 stars

I recommend The Fourth Part of the World, by Toby Lester, to anyone with an interest in the age of exploration. It might be slow going for those unable to gloss over details, because while exploration and geographical development is the theme, the book marches to a chronology of European map development, which might e...ventually prove wearisome to some readers. The book certainly put a damper on my Columbus Day party plans, shattering my trite schoolboy notions of an explorer who turns out to h...more

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Jun 15, 2011 Andrea rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

14th century Florence has so many facets to follow, and this gave a new dimension of intriguing life in search of the world of Ptolemy beyond the t-o map. German humanists saving the day of the renaissance and an appreciation for Ringmann emerge as necessary information from the introduction that this book offers, not to mention the need for a Waldseemuller map reproduction for my own. The organization and flow keep the reader engaged and flipping from text to maps for interpretation. My copy is...more

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May 06, 2013 Janet rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 14, 2013 Eddy Allen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: arts-and-historical

"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...more "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.
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Nov 06, 2012 Jeff rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Jeff by: Mark Spiers

Shelves: world-history

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 alive 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 hi...more

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May 02, 2010 Don rated it 5 of 5 stars

There are not many books on my bookshelf that I cherish - but, The Fourth Part of the World is now one to sit front and center on the shelf of books that I will keep forever.

In 1507, one year after Christopher Columbus died, a wondrous new map was published in Germany (of all places) showing the coastline of a new land - the fourth part of the world - amazingly with the word 'AMERICA' printed on it. This not only showed part of West Indies from Columbus - but parts of North and South America's c...more

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Feb 08, 2010 Terry Earley rated it 3 of 5 stars

This one took some time. It is an in-depth examination of map making and world exploration in the 15th and 16th century with credit given to earlier explorations and maps back to Marco Polo and others. It explains how Amerigo Vespucci name was attached to the western hemisphere instead of Columbus, largely as a result of Germanic map makers.

There are also detailed descriptions of voyages of discovery of the late 15th century of Atlantic islands, the coast of Africa, and the western hemisphere. I...more

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About Toby Lester

I'm a journalist, an editor, and an independent scholar. Most recently, I'm the author of Da Vinci's Ghost (2012), about Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, and The Fourth Part of the World (2009), about the map that gave America its name. I'm also a longtime contributor to The Atlantic, for whom I've written extensively, on such topics as the reconstruction of ancient Greek music, the revisionist...more I'm a journalist, an editor, and an independent scholar. Most recently, I'm the author of Da Vinci's Ghost (2012), about Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, and The Fourth Part of the World (2009), about the map that gave America its name. I'm also a longtime contributor to The Atlantic, for whom I've written extensively, on such topics as the reconstruction of ancient Greek music, the revisionist study of the Qur'an, and the attempt to change alphabets in Azerbaijan.

Between 1995 and 2005 I worked for The Atlantic in a number of different editorial capacities—as a staff editor, as the executive editor of the Web site, as a senior editor, and as a managing editor. During those years I also served briefly as the editor of Country Journal and the executive editor of DoubleTake. My writing has appeared in not only The Atlantic but also Smithsonian, The Boston Globe, The American Scholar, The Wilson Quarterly, BBC News Magazine, and the London Times, as well as a number of anthologies, including the lead chapter of the recent New Literary History of America.

Prior to 1995, I worked in international relief and development: monitoring intifada-related activity in the West Bank, as a refugee-affairs officer for the United Nations; helping establish programs in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, as a Peace Corps country desk officer; and teaching English in a mountain school, as a Peace Corps volunteer in Yemen. I graduated from the University of Virginia in 1987 with degrees in English and French, and now live in the Boston area with my wife and three daughters.

I come from a family of writers. My father, James Lester, was a member of the first successful American Everest expedition, and is the author of Too Marvelous for Words (1994), the only biography of the jazz pianist Art Tatum. My mother, Valerie Lester, is the author of, among other works, Fasten Your Seat Belts: History and Heroism in the Pan Am Cabin (1995), and Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens (2004)—a biography of her great-great grandfather, Hablot Knight Browne, who was Charles Dickens’s principal illustrator. And my sister, Alison Lester, is the author of Locked Out (2007), a collection of short stories about expatriate life. (less)

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5742798-the-fourth-part-of-the-world?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348330266l/5742798.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5742798-the-fourth-part-of-the-world?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]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 by Toby Lester[/url]

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

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