Amerigo Vespucci
by Nina Brown Baker
At a glance:
- Author: Nina Brown Baker
- First Published: 1956
- Type of Work: Biography
- Time of Work: 1463-1512
- Setting: Peretola, Florence, and San Marco, Italy; Seville, Spain; Venezuela; Haiti; Lisbon, Portugal; and Brazil
- Genres: Short fiction, Biography, Children's literature
- Subjects: Caribbean, Europe or Europeans, Brazil or Brazilians, Ships, Sailing or sailors, Fifteenth century, Sixteenth century, Central America or Central Americans, South America or South Americans, Spain or Spanish people, Exploration or explorers
- Locales: Europe, Haiti, Spain, Brazil, Florence, Italy, Italy, South America, Portugal, Seville, Spain, Lisbon, Portugal, Venezuela, Central America and West Indies, Peretola, Italy, San Marco, Italy
Form and Content
In twelve chapters, Nina Brown Baker sketches Amerigo Vespucci’s life from age twelve in Peretola, Italy, to his death forty-nine years later in Seville, Spain. Through third-person narration, Baker puts in chronological sequence the major events that led Vespucci to be the man with the knowledge to perceive what Christopher Columbus and others did not know—that, in sailing west, they had come to a vast, unknown continent.
The first chapter of Amerigo Vespucci establishes the young boy’s interest in charting the constellations. An incident...
(The entire page is 1442 words.)
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