1492: Not Simply the Year Columbus Sailed the Ocean Blue . . . In this extraordinary, sweeping history, Felipe FernÁndez-Armesto traces key elements of the modern world back to that single fateful year when everything changed.

In 1507, European cartographers were struggling to redraw their maps of the world and to name the newly found lands of the Western Hemisphere. The name they settled on: America, after Amerigo Vespucci, an obscure Florentine explorer.I...