its name

Blues Had a Baby: And Its Name Was Rock & Roll
$8.98

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
$30.00
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.

Paradise: All Its Name Implies T-shirt Large White
$17.95

Quad Width Wall Media Storage Unit-Oak Finish
$903.99
First of all, this is your typical fiberboard product with a flimsy cardboard backing. That said, I am very happy with this purchase. The visible areas of the tower are finished nicely and do not look cheap. I have over 600 movies and they fit just fine with a little room to spare for odd shaped media. The directions are okay but could use some more detail. Assembly took about two hours but I was going slow and took a couple beer breaks. The worst part of this assembly was trying to attach the backing without punching a nail through the finish...I failed. They supply a cover-up marker for damage to the finish so the end result looked pretty good in spite of my wayward hammer. I just needed a place to store my dvd`s. This tower fits great in my basement since it only sticks out about nine inches from the wall.