Amerigo cover $5.99 on Kindle, Nook, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play

(cover by Susan Erony)

Amerigo: A Comedy of Errors in History by Stefan Zweig (translated from the German by Andrew St. James, with a chronology of Stefan Zweig's life and a bibliography of works by and about Stefan Zweig in English by Randolph Klawiter; 24,000 words and 6 illustrations)

Stefan Zweig's Amerigo: A Comedy of Errors in History is the Austrian writer's account of how America got its name. This short, late work describes how Amerigo Vespucci, “a man of medium caliber [who] had never been entrusted with a fleet” gave his name to the New World because “of a combination of circumstances — through error, accident, and misunderstanding.”

Zweig was living in exile in Brazil when he wrote Amerigo, shortly before committing suicide in despair over Hitler's conquest of Europe. “The paradox that Columbus discovered America but failed to recognize it, while Vespucci did not discover it but was the first to recognize it as a new continent,” he wrote, illustrates how “history will not be reasoned with.”