A little-known true story written like a novel. Describing the life and career of Giovambattista Ramusio, the author paints a broad panorama of his times and the way his contemporaries saw the world. For lovers of history and geography.

Thanks to the publisher, Knopf, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

Although the content matter of this book and ARC initially excited me, however the actual reading experience was quite different. I suffered reading through this because it was boring and not entertaining. I have read many nonfiction authors like Nathaniel Philbrick, Walter Isaacson and the like that have a knack for a fun narrative that makes for a great read. Robilant was far from this this experience....

Content wise? I have read better books about map mapping like a title I cannot remember by Ken Jennings. Better titles I can remember are, "Longitude" by Dava Sobel and "Maps that Changed the World" by SImon Winschester. Infinitely better world map/mapping books than this one. Id would start with either of those books if this is a subject you are interested in learning about.

Cannot recommend.

Thanks to the Robilant, Netgalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and ANchot for an ARC in exchange for an honest review..

already available

Thank you so much to the publisher and netgalley for the arc of this one in exchange for an honest review!

This nonfiction book is all about the explorers and book publishers who helped map the world in the 1500s.

This book was very interesting! I liked how we got to learn about a lot of different people and what they did. It was very interesting to read about this time period and how people lived. I loved the publishing parts too.

I do feel like it was just a bit dense or wordy at times. However, it was still an interesting book and I would recommend!

Andrea di Robilant devotes the bulk of This Earthly Globe, his sixth book on a Venetian theme, to the travels of several early modern explorers: Antonio Pigafetta’s circumnavigation of the world, the Venetian merchant Cadamosto’s exploration of the coasts of west Africa, the “swashbuckling adventurer” Ludovico di Varthema’s exploits in India, Leo Africanus’s journeys across northern Africa, the Portuguese priest Francisco Álvares’s time in Ethiopia, the historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés’s natural history of the West Indies, Marco Polo’s famous travels in Asia. Di Robilant unites these stories by detailing how the Venetian civil servant Giovambattista Ramusio (1485-1557) tracked down accounts of these travels, which often existed only in manuscript, and edited them for inclusion in his three-volume masterpiece Navigations and Voyages, “one of the great publishing feats of the sixteenth century. It played a vital role in the final emancipation from a vision of the world still anchored to antiquity and became an indispensable source for the great cartographers of the second half of the sixteenth century.”
It is this last story—the story of Navigations and Voyages—that animates di Robilant’s book, and it is wonderfully chosen. The cartographers of Renaissance Europe faced an immense intellectual challenge. The standard map of the world, derived from the second-century cartographer Ptolemy, contained three continents surrounded by water: Africa, Asia, and Europe. But the geographic reports coming back from a number of overseas voyages and expeditions were becoming impossible to square with the Ptolemaic view. Realizing this, Ramusio published Navigations and Voyages in order “to consign to history the age-old Ptolemaic model of the world inherited from antiquity.” He succeeded, and Navigations and Voyages became one of the great achievements of the age.
Unfortunately, di Robilant shies from his subject. Despite stressing the epochal significance of Ramusio’s work, di Robilant leaves the reader wondering what kind of book Navigations and Voyages is. He implies that it provided a “suitable framework” for dealing with the welter of new geographic information, but he does not explain that framework. At times he writes as if Navigations and Voyages is an anthology of travelogues, at others that it is a synthesis of geographic reports. “Ramusio’s voice runs through every page of the volume.” The exact contents are not listed, nor is there a discussion of the maps Ramusio included. This Earthly Globe contains reproductions of some of those maps, drawn by the cartographer Giacomo Gastaldi, but questions about how those maps were drawn, how they differed from earlier maps, and how they influenced Europeans’ understanding of the world go unanswered. These are disappointing omissions, made more disappointing by the knowledge that “Gerhard Mercator, the Flemish mathematician who gave us the first modern map of the world (1569), owned and consulted all three volumes of the Ramusio trilogy.”
In his chapter on Marco Polo, di Robilant sets the stage well. Early sixteenth-century scholars believed that Polo had larded his narrative with fabulous tales, but Ramusio was not content with the general verdict. Comparing the standard published version with an older manuscript, Ramusio concluded that brazen interpolation and scribal error had introduced many fantastical elements. “Ramusio carefully collated the two manuscripts, making verifications and edits and changes along the way. He even added elements here and there when he felt he was on firm ground.”
This is promising stuff. Details about Ramusio’s editorial labors—how he excised the inauthentic and promoted the accurate—would illuminate the significance of Navigations and Voyages. But the promise goes unfulfilled. Instead of detailing how Ramusio transformed one of Europe’s most mistrsuted books into a fount of geographic knowledge, di Robilant settles for a thirty-page summary of Marco Polo’s adventures.
Ultimately, This Earthly Globe works best as an introduction to early modern exploration. Ramusio’s life and work become a frame on which di Robilant hangs retellings of the adventures of Cadamosto and others:
"One day the natives killed a baby elephant with poisoned lances and arrows. Battimansa offered the dead animal to Cadamosto, who observed that, “though young, he was the equivalent of five or six of our bulls.” He took a large chunk of elephant meat back to the boat and had a slice roasted and another one stewed to taste the difference. The meat was “tough and not very good,” but he ate it anyway so he could say that he had eaten something “no one else back home has ever eaten.”"
Such anecdotes are interesting—at least when taken by themselves. Yet surrounded as they are by hints of a yet more interesting book, they become reminders of how incurious This Earthly Globe is and of the unfulfilled promise at its heart. If di Robilant’s estimate of Navigations and Voyages is correct, Ramusio—and readers—deserve a better book.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for an advance copy on this book of exploration geography and biography, dealing with a man who used his power in the best way possible, to further the understanding of the world and those who live in it, for no other reason than his own curiosity.

The age of exploration was a a time of secrets. Governments did not want other monarchs or countries to know what had been discovered. Trading routes were both power, money prestige and well more money. Even as private companies, government backed adventurers, and even the curious set out into the unknown and returned with tales of new people, new ways, many of these stories were locked away. In Venice, there was a man who had access to many of these secrets, or knew the right people to bribe, flatter, or fool to get it. This man was no spymaster or merchant. Just a man with a curious mind, a love of geography, and want to share the world with the world. This Earthly Globe: A Venetian Geographer and the Quest to Map the World by Andrea di Robilant is the story of a man creating an anthology and atlas of great explorers, the first of its kind, and one that changed history and how people looked at it.

Giovanni Battista Ramusio was born in Venice, in 1485, with an interest in a great many things. Ramusio's father was a magistrate and taught his son languages, law and politics, which helped him get a job in the bureaucracy of Venice. Ramusio through skill and being a popular, yet straight ahead man, became translator for the Doge, which gave him access to government files both in Venice and around the world. Ramusio had two other interests. Geography and the people that made up this world, and all forms of publishing, from writing to editing to creating and printing books. Something that Venice was known for. By hook, crook, a kind word, or even a little money Ramusio began to gather the largets collection of maps, charts and more importantly travel adventures from all over the world. Many of these were considered state secrets, and as such were hidden away. However Ramusio was able to track them down. From adventures in Canada, to the people of North Africa. Even the works of Marco Polo, which Ramusio both fact-checked and edited. The final project was released in three volumes, that at least one was posthumous, but still a three volume set that changed the way people looked at the world.

The book is really wonderful, not just a biography on an interesting man, but a series of travel essays from Marco Polo, and Leo Africanius, stretching all over the world, from farthest China, Scandinavia, North and South America, and North Africa. To think that one man, was able to gather all this information from his home in Venice is amazing, and even more to put this all together. Di Robilant balances the exploration tales with how Ramusio came across them, so while the adventure might range in time, the chronology of how Ramusio came across them is consistent. The writing is very good, with a good flow and interesting facts on each page. I book I was not sure if I was going to enjoy, but one I felt very bad about ending.

Recommended for people who love books on exploration and adventure. This is almost an anthology of early exploration tales, and even now hundreds of years later, still are exciting. Also for people who biographies on people who do good things for no other reason than it just seemed right, and people could learn something.

This is the story of the creation of the "Navigationi et Viaggi," in three volumes, by Giovanni Battista Ramusio. The Navigationi provided maps and information on Brazil, Africa, India, the Spice Islands, Asia and even the American Southwest and Canada! But how did Ramusio accomplish this? Despite numerous threats from the Holy Roman Empire and France, Venice had an ambassador at every European court. As a magistrate, Ramusio used his political connections to pursue his true passion: travel writings. He managed to obtain a first hand account of Magellan's circumnavigation, Cadamosto's exploration of West Africa, Verrazano's trip from South Carolina to Nova Scotia, Vathema's 7-year journey to India and many others. All are incredibly rare copies, even during Ramusio's lifetime. But Ramusio's most impressive effort was incorporating a thorough study of the Travels of Marco Polo.

The structure of this book is what stands out the most. It's not a biography of Ramusio, although he is the center at which all these stories culminate. It's rather a collection of vignettes, all of which contributed to Ramusio's final creation. It did take me a few chapters to catch on to this method though, so I encourage readers to stick with it. The only downside is that the timeline can be hard to follow. I expected overlap, of course, but the vignettes are in order of Ramusio's acquisition (I believe?) and not necessarily in the chronological order of events. But considering the Age of Discovery, we are always taught about the Spanish, the English and the Portuguese, never the Venetians. Di Robilant definitely counters that omission. Even during war, 16th c. Venezia successfully established trade routes, explored new territories, and, thanks to Ramusio, was the premier source for geographical knowledge.

Thank you Alfred Knopf for approving "This Earthly Globe" by Andrea Di Robilant for me on Netgalley !