From Ptolemy's world map to the Hereford's Mappa Mundi, through Mercator's map of the world to the latest maps of the Moon and Google Earth, Great Maps provides a fascinating overview of cartography through the ages.Revealing the stories behind 55 historical maps by analyzing graphic close-ups, Great Maps also profiles key cartographers and explorers to look why each map was commissioned, who it was for and how they influenced navigation, propaganda, power, art, and politics.

    In this time, cartography has not only kept pace with these changes, but has often driven them. In this beautiful book, over 70 maps give a visual representation of the history of the world.Every map tells a story and this book tells the incredible history of our world through maps, and includes many famous examples of cartography, along with some that deserve to be better known. See countries and cities come and go, empires rise and fall, significant geographical discoveries, and key historical events unfold.Key maps shown include:• Babylonian clay tablets, c.2300 BC and c.600 BC – some of the world’s oldest surviving maps.• Waldseemüller World Map, 1507 – the first map to use the name ‘America’ for the New World.• Waghenaer chart, 1584 – a forerunner to modern nautical charts.• Abel Buell map of North America, 1782 – the first map of the newly independent United States that was produced in America by an American.• The Scramble for Africa, 1852/1898 – maps of new colonies being created.• Ypres, 1918 – map of the aftermath of the First World War.• Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 – map used by President John F. Kennedy during the crisis.

    Built on six innovative case studies, it brings together historians, geographers, and geographic information scientists to interrogate the places and spaces of the genocide. The cases encompass the landscapes of particular places (the killing zones in the East, deportations from sites in Italy, the camps of Auschwitz, the ghettos of Budapest) and the intimate spaces of bodies on evacuation marches. Geographies of the Holocaust puts forward models and a research agenda for different ways of visualizing and thinking about the Holocaust by examining the spaces and places where it was enacted and experienced.

    This magnificent collection, drawn from seven centuries of maps held in the National Archives at Kew, looks at a variety of maps, from those found in 14th Century manuscripts, through early estate maps, to sea charts, maps used in military campaigns, and maps from treaties. The text explores who the mapmakers were, the purposes for which the maps were made, and what it tells us about the politics of the time. Great images are accompanied by compelling stories. Featured is a woodcut map of 16th Century London, a map of where the bombs fell during the Second World War, and a map the first American settlers' drew when they were attempting to establish a new empire on Roanoke Island, off the coast of what is now North Carolina. Richly illustrated with large scale reproductions of the maps, the book also includes some of the more amusing or esoteric maps from the National Archives, such as the map of the Great Exhibition in 1851 that was presented on a lady's glove, a London Underground map in the form of a cucumber, and a Treasure Island map used to advertise National Savings.This is a fascinating and unusual journey through the world of maps and mapmakers.

    Born less than a year after the beginning of the French Revolution, he lived through turbulent times. He was an erudite polymath: a maritime explorer fascinated by botany, entomology, ethnography, and the diverse languages of the world. As a young ensign, he was decorated for his pivotal part in France's acquisition of the famous Venus de Milo. Dumont d'Urville's voyages and writings meshed with an emergent French colonial impulse in the Pacific. This magnificent biography reveals that he had secret orders to search for the site for a potential French penal colony in Australia. The book examines Dumont d'Urville's scientific contribution, including the plants and animals he collected, as well as his conceptualization of the peoples of the Pacific: it was he who first coined the terms Melanesia and Micronesia. He helped to confirm the fate of the missing French explorer Laperouse, took Charles X into exile after the Revolution of 1830, and crowned his navigational achievements with two pioneering Antarctic descents. The book uses primary documents that have long been overlooked by other historians. It dispels many myths and errors about this daring explorer of the age of sail and offers readers a grand adventure along with surprising drama and pathos. [Author Edward Duyker has published 17 books, many dealing with early Australian, New Zealand, and Pacific exploration and natural science. These include Citizen Labillardiere (2003), a biography of the naturalist Jacques-Julien Houtou de Labillardiere, which won the NSW Premier's General History Prize in 2004; and Francois Peron (2006), which won the Frank Broeze Maritime History Prize in 2007. In 2000, Duyker was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Palmes Academiques by the French government. He was awarded the Centenary Medal by the Australian government in 2003 and the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2004.]