Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Amerigo: The Man Who Gave His Name to America

Quick, quick as it's time for me to fly. Or actually drive. But this last little bit I've been engaged reading about Amerigo Vespucci. Judicious, engaging, balanced (if rather critical of Vespucci, Columbus, and the lot of the early European explorers of the "New World"), Amerigo succeeds in sketching the man, from limited sources (very limited sources), and the world he lived, worked, explored (to some extent), and puffed himself up in.

Vespucci, it turns out, was sort of a shit. But as Fernández-Armesto points out, most of "them" were. The book, however, isn't.

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