Mapping the World

This illustrated history treats maps as records of exploration rather than as a technical manual of surveying. Whitfield follows how European and other mapmakers pictured the known world from ancient and medieval world-schemes through portolan charts and the revised globes of the age of oceanic discovery. Chapters take in the Americas, the Pacific, the African coasts, and the polar regions as they were filled in, revised, and sometimes invented. Explorers' narratives and the commercial demand for charts sit beside the images themselves. The book is a history of geographic knowledge and its pictures, not an atlas for navigation.

Bound in cloth blocked with a design in gold and black. Ancient map printed slipcase. Presentation volume for 2001.