- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Maps fascinate us. They chart our understanding of the world and they log our progress, but above all they tell our stories. From the early sketches of philosophers and explorers through to Google Maps and beyond, Simon Garfield examines how maps both relate and realign our history.With a historical sweep ranging from Ptolemy to Twitter, Garfield explores the legendary, impassable (and non-existent) mountains of Kong, the role of cartography in combatting cholera, the 17th-century Dutch craze for Atlases, the Norse discovery of America, how a Venetian monk mapped the world from his cell and the Muppets' knack of instant map-travel. Along the way are pocket maps of dragons, Mars, murders and more, with plenty of illustrations and prints to signpost the route.From the bestselling and widely-adored author of Just My Type, On The Map is a witty and irrepressible examination of where we've been, how we got there and where we're going.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Copyright Page
- Title Page
- Contents
- For the Love of Maps: Foreword by Dava Sobel
- Introduction: The Map That Wrote Itself
- 1 What Great Minds Knew
- 2 The Men Who Sold the World
- 3 The World Takes Shape
- 4 Venice, China and a Trip to the Moon
- 5 The Mystery of Vinland
- 6 Welcome to Amerigo
- 7 What’s the Good of Mercator?
- 8 The World in a Book
- 9 Mapping a Cittee (without Forder Troble)
- 10 Six Increasingly Coordinated Tales of the Ordnance Survey
- 11 The Legendary Mountains of Kong
- 12 Cholera and the Map that Stopped It
- 13 X Marks the Spot: Treasure Island
- 14 The Worst Journey in the World to the Last Place to Be Mapped
- 15 Mrs P and the A-Z
- 16 Maps in All Our Hands: A Brief History of the Guidebook
- 17 Casablanca, Harry Potter and Where Jennifer Aniston Lives
- 18 How to Make a Very Big Globe
- 19 The Biggest Map Dealer, the Biggest Map Thief
- 20 Driving Into Lakes: How Sat Nav Put the World in a Box
- 21 Pass Go and Proceed Direct to Skyrim
- 22 Mapping the Brain
- Epilogue: The Instant, Always-On, Me-Mapping of Everywhere
- Acknowledgements
- Bibliography
- Picture credits
- Index
- Footnotes