Illustration by Tim Robinson. “To the memory of Christopher Columbus,” reads the inscription to the large Columbus Fountain in Washington, D.C., “whose high faith and indomitable courage gave to mankind a New World.” The monument was erected in 1912, and one cringes reading those words now. Columbus did not give mankind a New World. As the statue of the Native American man kneeling by Columbus’s side suggests, that world was already fully possessed by humanity. Books in Review By Sonia Shah Nearly everywhere European “discoverers” sailed, in fact, they met people who had discovered those lands long before them. The Americas had already been discovered; so had Australia and New Zealand and the Arctic North. Even seemingly remote Pacific islands were inhabited by the time Europeans arrived. It’s bracing to realize just how few truly empty places European sailors found—“islands and ice, mostly,” according to the Yale cartographer Bill Rankin. Not counting the frozen continental land at the poles, Rankin calculates that the uninhabited areas discovered by seafaring Europeans amounted to only 0.14 percent of the world’s land.