Amerigo: The Man Who Gave His Name to America - Softcover

Fernández-Armesto, Felipe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812972988 ISBN 13: 9780812972986

Publisher: Random House Trade, 2008

Synopsis

In Amerigo, the award-winning scholar Felipe Fernández-Armesto answers the question "What's in a name?" by delivering a rousing flesh-and-blood narrative of the life and times of Amerigo Vespucci. Here we meet Amerigo as he really was: a rogue and raconteur who counted Christopher Columbus among his friends and rivals; an amateur sorcerer who attained fame and honor through a series of disastrous failures and equally grand self-reinventions. Filled with well-informed insights and amazing anecdotes, this magisterial and compulsively readable account sweeps readers from Medicean Florence to the Sevillian court of Ferdinand and Isabella, then across the Atlantic of Columbus to the brave New World where fortune favored the bold.

Amerigo Vespucci emerges from these pages as an irresistible avatar for the age of exploration-and as a man of genuine achievement as a voyager and chronicler of discovery. And now, in Amerigo, this mercurial and elusive figure finally has a biography to do full justice to both the man and his remarkable era.

Praise for Amerigo

"Wonderfully idiosyncratic and intelligent."
-The New York Times Book Review

"Fascinating . . . [Fernández-Armesto's] lively style is effective in evoking the flashy and violent world of Renaissance Europe."
-The Washington Post Book World

"An outstanding historian . . . [Fernández-Armesto] introduces Amerigo Vespucci as an amazing Renaissance character independent of his name's fame-and does Fernández-Armesto ever deliver."
-Booklist (starred review)

"Dazzling . . . an elegant tale of Vespucci's ability to transform himself from a merchant into an explorer and conqueror of new worlds."
-Publishers Weekly (starred review)

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST

About this title

Review:

"An imaginative, intelligent and sprightly volume that, in the space of some two hundred pages, races through the history of the Western hemisphere-from prehistoric times to the present."
-The Washington Post Book World
"This wonderfully sharp and provocative book should become essential reading for anybody interested in the history of America."
-The Times Literary Supplement (London)"
"Fernandez-Armesto can personalize broad historical trends without sinking into triviality. . . . History written at its best." -Booklist

"An imaginative, intelligent and sprightly volume that, in the space of some two hundred pages, races through the history of the Western hemisphere-from prehistoric times to the present."
-The Washington Post Book World
"This wonderfully sharp and provocative book should become essential reading for anybody interested in the history of America."
-The Times Literary Supplement (London)"
"
"Fernandez-Armesto can personalize broad historical trends without sinking into triviality. . . . History written at its best." -Booklist

Book Description:

The life of Amerigo Vespucci, merchant, explorer and master of self-invention

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Trade
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0812972988
• ISBN 13: 9780812972986
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272