A Renaissance Globemaker’s Toolbox & the Naming of America

‘The Naming of America’ features a facsimile of the 1507 World Map by Martin Waldseemuller - the first map ever to display the name America - and tells the fascinating story behind its creation and rediscovery. It also includes a completely new translation and commentary to the ‘Cosmographiae Introductio’, the seminal cartographic text which originally accompanied the World Map. ‘A Renaissance Globemaker’s Toolbox’ is the first scholarly publication and English translation of the Schoner Sammelband, a collection of maps and notes made by the Nuremberg astronomer and mathematician Johannes Schoner (d. 1543), which included the Waldseemuller World Maps and a set of celestial globe gores of Schoner’s design. Author John Hessler discusses the history of these materials, some of the most important in the history of cartography, and reveals the concerns that fuelled cartographic development during this critical period in the history of science and exploration.