Upcoming Books on Waldseemüller

Waldeseemueller map (thumbnail) On MapHist, John Hessler writes:

Two new books on Waldseemüller and the context of the creation of the 1507 and 1516 world maps are due to be released in the next few months.
The first, by Seymour Schwartz (an author whose work you all know), Putting “America” on the Map: The Story of the Most Important Graphic Document in the History of the United States, will be released in August 2007 by Prometheus Books. This book contains a nice summary of the current and past scholarship on the 1507 map and a biography of its re-discoverer Joseph Fischer.
The second, by John Hessler, entitled The Naming of America: Waldseemüller’s 1507 World Map and the Cosmographiae Introductio, will be released in late December to coincide with the encasement of the 1507 World Map by the Library of Congress and is published by the LOC and designed by the art publisher Giles of London. This book contains an introduction to new scholarship on both the 1507 and 1516 world maps, focusing mostly on their use by their first owner Johannes Schöner and the map’s relationship to the other parts of Schöner’s extant Library in Vienna. The book also contains a new heavily annotated translation of Waldseemüller and Ringmann’s Cosmographiae Introductio with a commentary on the text that identifies place names and the sources for Waldseemüller’s quotes from classical and contemporary literature. This is topped off with a sheet by sheet facsimile of the 1507 world map.
For all those interested in Waldseemüller and his circle it should be a great year of reading. If that is not enough for you, however, in 2009 two more books will also focus on Waldseemüller and Schöner. One written by the former editor of the Atlantic Monthly, Toby Lester, entitled The Fourth Part on the World: The Epic Story of the Voyagers and Thinkers from Marco Polo to Vespucci Who Created the Waldseemüller Map of 1507 and Ushered in the New World, published by the major trade house The Free Press, and a second book by Hessler entitled Johannes Schöner and the Nuremburg Astronomers 1473-1545 by a major university press (details not yet final).

(Reprinted with permission; links added.)

Previously: More About Waldseemüller; Waldseemüller Map Formally Transferred; Waldseemüller Map Stamp Issued; Encasing Waldseemüller’s Map; Waldseemüller’s Map Goes for £545,600; Auction of First Map of the New World.

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