The naming of America

Published by the Library of Congress in association with London-based fine-art publisher D. Giles Limited, "The Naming of America" tells the story behind the map's creation in 16th-century France and rediscovery more than 300 years later in the library of Wolfegg Castle in Germany. Of the 1,000 originally printed, it is the only known copy to survive. Produced in 12 sheets, the 1507 map represents the continents of North and South America separated from Asia by the Pacific Ocean. The book shows the composite view and features the first sheet-by-sheet color facsimile. The book also includes a completely new translation of and commentary by Hessler to the "Cosmographiae Introductio," the seminal cartographic text by Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann that is thought to have originally accompanied the World Map. Together the 1507 map and the "Cosmographiae Introductio" occupy a crucial place in history, between the discovery of the New World by Columbus in 1492 and the birth of the scientific revolution with Copernicus in 1543. - Library of Congress.