This is an academic book and not for the feint of heart. It is full of excellent information and is well-presented. ( )

It's true that this book may not be everyone's cup of tea. It's got more methodological discussion than most popular histories but less detail than many academic histories. At the same time, its hybrid character is one of the things that makes it remarkably good if you have time to look more closely. In addition to giving a good biographical narrative of Amerigo Vespucci's life, Fernández-Armesto offers some nicely nuanced thoughts on how historians handle and debate figures who left so few primary sources behind. His discussion of disputes over the authenticity or inauthenticity of various printed travel accounts that bear Vespucci's name is particularly illuminating, as is his discussion of how Vespucci's writings reflect not just what he saw but what he had read (and therefore had used to interpret what he believed he had found). There is also some terrific contextual material on the intellectual, political, and commercial milieu of Florence and its relations to the Iberian voyages. Overall this is a concise but not necessarily quick read, but if you have time to savor it a bit, the rewards are there. ( )

I listened to the audiobook version of this read by Michael Prichard. It is dreary experience. The book is full of facts but the author writes that most are hard to prove due to little evidence about Amerigo. The narrator is incredibly boring to listen to. He doesn't seem to put any interest into what he's reading. He also narrated Les Standifords book, "Washington Burning: How a Frenchman's Vision of Our Nations Capital Survived Congress, the Founding Fathers and the Invading British Army." I couldn't finish Standifords audiobook as Prichard was so boring and monotonous with it. I will look for the book itself of "Amerigo" as I think I'd enjoy it more. ( )

Fernández-Armesto is ever-witty, erudite, and engaging. His research is wide and detailed. His story told with verve. This is the best biography of Amerigo Vespucci that exists, and probably will be the best for generations.

Vespucci was nothing special. He was not a navigator. Unlike Columbus the Genoese, he was a landlubbing Florentine. He was not a competent businessman. He made no vast sums. He was not a conquistador. He found no riches like Cortés. Vespucci was a middling factotum for larger Florentine interests who probably captained no ships and only made two voyages, not the three or four often ascribed to him.

Fernández-Armesto calls him a magus. A trickster who parleyed his late-Renaissance learning, his Florentine-Medici connections, and his gift for self-promotion into a sort of fame, or infamy. He wrote to his sometime patron, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, and others, playing up his travels. He exaggerated and hyperbolized his mere tagging along on a Spanish expedition and a Portuguese expedition, turning these into grand explorations under his captaincy. All poppycock. But the books that came into print under his name, Fernández-Armesto claims that he had a hand in all of them, made him into a superstar. The books had the standard tropes of the genre (Sir John Mandeville and Columbus were his models): cannibals, naked savages, wild birds, exotic fauna and flora, and the like. These books became bestsellers, and Vespucci's fame brought him a job with the Spanish (a job that he did not do particularly well) and reputation. This reputation led to the strange incident of Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann slapping his name on the South American continent they put on their 1507 wall map of the world. Why? They believed Vespucci's P.R. that he had found a "new world," a "new continent." Fernández-Armesto points out, he didn't discover it, he didn't land on it first, and he wasn't the first to call it something new (Columbus himself had called it an "otro mundo," an "other world"). But he got the credit. And the name stuck.

A fine book all around: writing, research, reading. Good endnotes, good index, decent images (Fernández-Armesto dismisses the conjecture via Vasari that the boy painted in the Madonna della Misericordia by Domenico Ghirlandaio at the Ognissanti church in Florence is a young Amerigo), one map. The only thing which knocked it down to 4.5 stars is the lack of a bibliography/suggested readings. ( )

No book on Vespucci is easy given his complicated and poorly documented life and explorations. Unfortunately, the author adds to the difficulty with a writing style that is overly academic and stilted. 30% of the work is devoted to the inner workings of life in early 16th century Florence and Seville, including unnecessarily detailed discussions of the Medici clan. While this background is helpful for an appreciation of both to whom and why Vespucci wrote some of his letters, one simple chapter would have sufficed. As another example, the author includes many references to persons of that period with no real importance to the work, other than perhaps to demonstrate the author's breadth of knowledge.

On the positive, the author's skeptical analysis of various claims and voyages by Vespucci is helpful, although a more concise writing style would have afforded more clarity.

Not recommended for the casual reader looking for an introduction into Vespucci's fascinating life. ( )