Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #277305 in Books
• Published on: 2005-11-15
• Released on: 2005-11-15
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 360 pages

From the Inside Flap
'Journey over all the universe in a map, without the expense and fatigue of traveling, without suffering the inconveniences of heat, cold, hunger, and thirst.' --Miguel de Cervantes, in Don Quixote From the earliest of times, maps have fired our imaginations and helped us make sense of our world, from the global to the very local. Head of Map Collections at the British Library, Peter Barber has here compiled an historic and lavish atlas, charting the progress of civilization as our knowledge of the world expanded. Simply organized as a progression through time, The Map Book collects some 175 maps that span four millennia - from the famed prehistoric Bedolina (Italy) incision in rock from around 1500 B.C. to the most modern, digitally enhanced rendering. Many of the maos are beautiful works of art in their own right. From Europe to the Americas, Africa to Asia, north to south, there are maps of oceans and continents charted by heroic adventurers sailing into the unknown, as accounts spread of new discoveries, shadowy continents begin to appear n the margins of the world, often labeled 'unknown lands.' Other maps had a more practical use: some demarcated national boundaries or individual plots of land; military plans depicted enemy positions; propaganda treatises showed one country or faction at an advantage over others. So much history resides in each map--cultural, mythological, navigational--expressing the unlimited extent of human imagination. This is captured in the accompanying texts--mini essays by leading map historians--that are as vivid and insightful as the maps themselves. They make The Map Book as much a volume to be read as to be visually admired.

About the Author
Peter Barber trained as a diplomatic historian. He has published extensively on medieval world maps, and on map use and the relationship between mapping and government in the early modern period. In addition to being Head of Map Collections at the British Library, he is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Geographical Society, and an honorary editorial board member of Mapforum.

Customer Reviews

Great gift for history buff
My husband loves maps and loves history. So, this seemed to be the perfect gift. As it turns out, I was correct. This is a beautiful book and lives up to the description that appears on the Amazon web site. He really is enjoying the book.

The Map Book
I gave this as a gift and the person who received it was thrilled with it.

Photos too small to be of any value. And the Empire is dead .
Mr. Barber was apparently so taken by the idea of putting together a collection of his favorite maps that he forgot that: 1) there are already more map books on the market than you can shake a compass at and a bigger book of maps is not automatically a better book, 2) his book, like all the others, was inevitably going to suffer from the same defect, namely reproductions of maps so reduced in size as to be unreadable, and 3) putting the primary focus on maps relating to the defunct British Empire may be patriotic to his countrymen but only serves to amuse the rest of the world.

Oh, and the proofreading provided by his publisher leaves much to be desired. That is unless the Japanese actually DID attack Pearl Harbor on December 3, 1941 !