The Naming of America: Martin Waldseemuller's 1507 World Map and the Cosmographiae Introductio. by Hessler, John W - 2008.

London:: GILES, 2008.. 1st Edition.. Hardbound . BINDING/CONDITION: wine colored binding; a Fine book, with a Fine dust jacket.. oblong format: 7.75 inches tall by 9.25 inches wide . Gray endpapers. Description: The publisher's blurb reads: ''This new book features the first sheet by sheet facsimile of the 1507 World Map by Martin Waldseemuller -- one of the most important maps in the history of cartography and the first map ever to display the name America. It tells the fascinating story behind the map's creation in 16th century France and rediscovery 300 years later in the library of Wolfegg Castle, Germany, in 1901. It also includes a completely new translation and commentary to Martin Waldseemuller and Matthias Ringman's seminal cartographic text, the Cosmographiae Introductio, which originally accompanied the World Map. In his introduction, John Hessler summarizes the current state of knowledge on Waldseemuller and his collaborators and considers answer to some of the key questions raised by the map's representation of the New World, including 'How was a small group of cartographers able to produce a view of the world so radical for its time and so close to the one we recognize today?' and "What evidence did they have to show the existence of the Pacific Ocean when neither Vasco Nunez de Balbo nor Ferdinand Magellan had yet reached it?' Hessler affords us a glimpse into an age when accepted scientific and geographic principles fell away, spawning the birth of modernity.''