The beauty and awe generated by the celestial void captures our imagination and delights our aesthetic sense. Antiquarian map societies are prospering, and celestial maps are now viewed as a specialty of map collecting. This book traces the history of celestial cartography and relates this history to the changing ideas of man’s place in the universe and to advances in map-making. Photographs from actual antiquarian celestial atlases and prints, many previously unpublished, enrich the text. The book describes the development and relationships between different sky maps and atlases as well as demonstrating contemporary cosmological ideas, constellation representations, and cartographic advances.

Focuses on 100 maps that changed human understanding of the world around us, changed the course of map-making, or directly influenced the path of history. This book reveals how different peoples have observed and represented their world through the ages, and how maps have been used for a variety of purposes.

Product Description: Fra Mauro's mappamundi, drawn around 1450 in the monastery of San Michele on Murano in the lagoon of Venice, is among the most relevant compendia of knowledge of the Earth and the Cosmos of the fifteenth century. By examining literary, visual, textual and archival evidences, some long considered lost, this book places the map within the larger context of Venetian culture in the fifteenth century...read more

Product Description: An illustrated history of explorers' maps and the questions they answer. More than the detailed representation of the geographical areas that their makers explored, maps reveal their makers' worldview as well as the myths, beliefs and legends of their times...read more

Product Description: "Old maps lead you to strange and unexpected places, and none does so more ineluctably than the subject of this book: the giant, beguiling Waldseemüller world map of 1507." So begins this remarkable story of the map that gave America its name...read more

Product Description: An intriguing collection of more than one hundred out-of-the-ordinary maps, blending art, history, and pop culture for a unique atlas of humanity Spanning many centuries, all continents, and the realms of outer space and the imagination, this collection of 138 unique graphics combines beautiful full-color illustrations with quirky statistics and smart social commentary...read more

Product Description: Winner of the 2004 Norma Fleck Award for Canadian children’s non-fictionHonor Book for the Society of School Librarians International’s Best Book Award – Social Studies, Grades 7-12Shortlisted for the Children's Literature Roundtable Information Book of the Year2003 winner of the Mr...read more

Product Description: This illustrated work is intended to acquaint readers with the early maps produced in both Europe and the rest of the world, and to tell us something of their development, their makers and printers, their varieties and characteristics...read more

Product Description: Maps from virtually every culture and period—from Babylonian world maps to Saul Steinberg’s famous New Yorker cover illustration, “View of the World from 9th Avenue”—convey our tendency to see our communities as the center of the world (if not the universe) and, by implication, as superior to anything beyond these immediate boundaries...read more

Product Description: In scope, this book matches "The History of Cartography", vol. 1 (1987) edited by Brian Harley and David Woodward. Now, twenty years after the appearance of that seminal work, classicists and medievalists from Europe and North America highlight, distill and reflect on the remarkably productive progress made since in many different areas of the study of maps...read more

Product Description: THIS EDITION IS INTENDED FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. Explores how maps have evolved through the ages and how maps are made today. Features vivid color photographs and maps with lively captions.

Product Description: In this concise introduction to the history of cartography, Norman J. W. Thrower charts the intimate links between maps and history from antiquity to the present day. A wealth of illustrations, including the oldest known map and contemporary examples made using Geographical Information Systems (GIS), illuminate the many ways in which various human cultures have interpreted spatial relationships...read more

Product Description: Maps are universal forms of communication, easily understood and appreciated regardless of culture or language. This truly magisterial book introduces readers to the widest range of maps ever considered in one volume: maps from different time periods and a variety of cultures; maps made for divergent purposes and depicting a range of environments; and maps that embody the famous, the important, the beautiful, the groundbreaking, or the amusing...read more

A lavishly illustrated tour of some of the most significant and history-making maps ever made is culled from Library of Congress archives and offers insight into the role of maps as living histories, in a volume that features such examples as the Waldseemuller Map of the World from 1507 and William Faulkner's hand-drawn 1936 maps of the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. 20,000 first printing.

Product Description: In 1507, a German cartographer working in Saint Die, in the Duchy of Lorraine, created a world map that, for the first time, included the continental landmasses in the Western Hemisphere, discovered within the 15 previous years. He inserted the name "America" on the southern continent, honoring Amerigo Vespucci, who had erroneously been credited with setting foot on South American soil before Christopher Columbus...read more

Product Description: In the two centuries before Columbus, mapmaking was transformed. The World Map, 1300--1492 investigates this important, transitional period of mapmaking. Beginning with a 1436 atlas of ten maps produced by Venetian Andrea Bianco, Evelyn Edson uses maps of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to examine how the discoveries of missionaries and merchants affected the content and configuration of world maps...read more

Product Description: A novel work in the history of cartography, The Sovereign Map argues that maps are as much about thinking as seeing, as much about the art of persuasion as the science of geography. As a classicist, Christian Jacob brings a fresh eye to his subject—which includes maps from Greek Antiquity to the twentieth century—and provides a theoretical approach to investigating the power of maps to inform, persuade, and inspire the imagination...read more

Product Description: Why is Europe at the top half of maps and Africa at the bottom? Although we are accustomed to that convention, it is, in fact, a politically motivated, almost entirely subjective way of depicting a ball spinning in space. As The Power of Projections teaches us, maps do not portray reality, only interpretations of it...read more

Product Description: Scythia and the islands in the Ocean-Sea, the farthest northern and northeastern regions of the world known to ancient and medieval geographers, roughly correspond to modern-day Scandinavia, Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia...read more

Taking in cartography from all over the globe, this book charts the exploration and mapping of the planet - from before the age of printing to modern satellite imaging - telling the stories of the cartographers, explorers, inventors and surveyors who have mapped our world.

Product Description: From Ptolemy's projection of the world--still the basic map after 13 centuries--to Tolkien's cartography of Middle Earth (the most printed guide to a non-existent place ever), each of these maps has its own fascinating story to tell...read more

Product Description: Mapping the World is a one-of-a-kind collection of cartographic treasures that spans thousands of years and many cultures, from an ancient Babylonian map of the world etched on clay to the latest high-tech maps of the earth, seas, and the skies above...read more