Now Garfield takes on a subject even dearer to our fanatical human hearts: maps.Imagine a world without maps. How would we travel? Could we own land? What would men and women argue about in cars? Scientists have even suggested that mapping—not language—is what elevated our prehistoric ancestors from ape-dom. Follow the history of maps from the early explorers’ maps and the awe-inspiring medieval Mappa Mundi to Google Maps and the satellite renderings on our smartphones, Garfield explores the unique way that maps relate and realign our history—and reflect the best and worst of what makes us human.Featuring a foreword by Dava Sobel and packed with fascinating tales of cartographic intrigue, outsize personalities, and amusing “pocket maps” on an array of subjects from how to fold a map to the strangest maps on the Internet, On the Map is a rich historical tapestry infused with Garfield’s signature narrative flair. Map-obsessives and everyone who loved Just My Type will be lining up to join Garfield on his audacious journey through time and around the globe.

    Architectural marvels, including the M.C. Escher-like stepwells in India. Mind-boggling events, like the Baby Jumping Festival in Spain, where men dressed as devils literally vault over rows of squirming infants. Not to mention the Great Stalacpipe Organ in Virginia, Turkmenistan’s 45-year hole of fire called the Door of Hell, coffins hanging off a side of a cliff in the Philippines, eccentric bone museums in Italy, or a weather-forecasting invention that was powered by leeches, still on display in Devon, England.Atlas Obscura revels in the weird, the unexpected, the overlooked, the hidden, and the mysterious. Every page expands our sense of how strange and marvelous the world really is. And with its compelling descriptions, hundreds of photographs, surprising charts, maps for every region of the world, it is a book you can open anywhere.

    From deserted cities and strange settlements, to remote islands and underground labyrinths, this atlas features more than 50 unusual locations around the world—from San Juan in Parangaricutiro, a town entirely submerged by lava, to Leap Castle in Ireland, allegedly the most haunted house in the world. Inviting text by British cultural commentator Travis Elborough is paired with photos, artfully drawn maps, and illustrations. Over the course of five chapters, readers will explore floating worlds, utopian cities, deserted places, man-made oddities, obscure locations, mysterious underground realms, and more. Lyrically written and beautifully illustrated, this book will inform, enlighten, and intrigue you as it takes you on a journey to far-off, peculiar, and often unreachable parts of our world.

    When all was said and done, Gilbert Joseph Bland, Jr., had become the Al Capone of cartography. 20 illustrations throughout.

    More than twenty essays assemble a chorus of vibrant voices, including geographers, scholars of sugar and bananas, the city's remarkable musicians, prison activists, environmentalists, Arab and Native voices, and local experts, as well as the coauthors' compelling contributions. Featuring 22 full-color two-page-spread maps, Unfathomable City plumbs the depths of this major tourist destination, pivotal scene of American history and culture and, most recently, site of monumental disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill.The innovative maps' precision and specificity shift our notions of the Mississippi, the Caribbean, Mardi Gras, jazz, soils and trees, generational roots, and many other subjects, and expand our ideas of how any city is imagined and experienced. Together with the inspired texts, they show New Orleans as both an imperiled city--by erosion, crime, corruption, and sea level rise--and an ageless city that lives in music as a form of cultural resistance. Compact, lively, and completely original, Unfathomable City takes readers on a tour that will forever change the way they think about place.Read an excerpt here: Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas by Rebecca Solnit and Rebecca Snedeker by University of California PressListen to an interview with the authors here:http://www.ucpress.edu/blog/16097/new...

    Extracted from an Afghan mine, the blue “ultramarine” paint used by Michelangelo was so expensive he couldn’t afford to buy it himself. Since ancient times, carmine red—still found in lipsticks and Cherry Coke today—has come from the blood of insects.

    See the world mapped out by stereotypes; discover the internet in cartographical form; marvel at the maps of global technology and culture; and explore the world through infographics and statistics. This wonderful and strange atlas is a treasure trove of interesting, unexpected and bizarre facts, a glorious celebration of our big beautiful diverse world.

    In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes readers on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii on Italy’s southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today.Newitz travels to all four sites and investigates the cutting-edge research in archaeology, revealing the mix of environmental changes and political turmoil that doomed these ancient settlements. Tracing the early development of urban planning, Newitz also introduces us to the often anonymous workers—slaves, women, immigrants, and manual laborers—who built these cities and created monuments that lasted millennia.Four Lost Cities is a journey into the forgotten past, but, foreseeing a future in which the majority of people on Earth will be living in cities, it may also reveal something of our own fate.

    You'll never see the city the same way again.At the core of A Burglar's Guide to the City is an unexpected and thrilling insight: how any building transforms when seen through the eyes of someone hoping to break into it. Studying architecture the way a burglar would, Geoff Manaugh takes readers through walls, down elevator shafts, into panic rooms, up to the buried vaults of banks, and out across the rooftops of an unsuspecting city.With the help of FBI Special Agents, reformed bank robbers, private security consultants, the L.A.P.D. Air Support Division, and architects past and present, the book dissects the built environment from both sides of the law. Whether picking padlocks or climbing the walls of high-rise apartments, finding gaps in a museum's surveillance routine or discussing home invasions in ancient Rome, A Burglar's Guide to the City has the tools, the tales, and the x-ray vision you need to see architecture as nothing more than an obstacle that can be outwitted and undercut.Full of real-life heists-both spectacular and absurd-A Burglar's Guide to the City ensures readers will never enter a bank again without imagining how to loot the vault or walk down the street without planning the perfect getaway.

    Even the oddities—the entire state of Maryland(!)—have become so engrained that our map might as well be a giant jigsaw puzzle designed by Divine Providence. But that's where the real mystery begins. Every edge of the familiar wooden jigsaw pieces of our childhood represents a revealing moment of history and of, well, humans drawing lines in the sand.How the States Got Their Shapes is the first book to tackle why our state lines are where they are. Here are the stories behind the stories, right down to the tiny northward jog at the eastern end of Tennessee and the teeny-tiny (and little known) parts of Delaware that are not attached to Delaware but to New Jersey.How the States Got Their Shapes examines:Why West Virginia has a finger creeping up the side of PennsylvaniaWhy Michigan has an upper peninsula that isn't attached to MichiganWhy some Hawaiian islands are not HawaiiWhy Texas and California are so outsized, especially when so many Midwestern states are nearly identical in sizePacked with fun oddities and trivia, this entertaining guide also reveals the major fault lines of American history, from ideological intrigues and religious intolerance to major territorial acquisitions. Adding the fresh lens of local geographic disputes, military skirmishes, and land grabs, Mark Stein shows how the seemingly haphazard puzzle pieces of our nation fit together perfectly.

    People, Beings and BeastsWhere does the boogeyman come from?What creatures feast on faithful men?How do you defeat a minotaur?What really riles a dragon?Where would you find real-life werewolves?What happened to Atlantis?From dragons, vampires, werewolves and fairies to flying carpets, lost cities and modern-day mysteries,this delightful compendium of over 250 weird and wonderful legends, myths and monsters will entertain and astound anyone

    The result is a distinctive illustrated guide to the world. Categories of cartographic curiosities include: Literary Creations, featuring a map of Thomas More's Utopia and the world of George Orwell's 1984;Cartographic Misconceptions, such as a lavish seventeenthcentury map depicting California as an island Political Parody, containing the Jesusland map and other humorous takes on voter profiles; Whatchamacallit, including a map of the area codes for regions where the rapper Ludacris sings about having hoesbr; Obscure Proposals, capturing Thomas Jefferson's vision for dividing the Northwest Territory into ten states with names such as Polypotamia and Assenisipia; Fantastic Maps, with a depiction of what the globe might look like if the sea and land were inverted. The Strange Maps blog has been named by GeekDad Blog on Wired.com one of the more unusual and unique sites seen on the Web that doesn't sell anything or promote an agenda and it's currently ranked #423 on Technorati's Top 500 Blogs. Brimming with trivia, deadpan humor, and idiosyncratic lore, Strange Maps is a fascinating tour of all things weird and wonderful in the world of cartography.

    Was the Battle of Hastings a French victory?Non! William the Conqueror was Norman and hated the French.Were the Brits really responsible for the death of Joan of Arc?Non! The French sentenced her to death for wearing trousers.Was the guillotine a French invention?Non! It was invented in Yorkshire.Ten centuries' worth of French historical 'facts' bite the dust as Stephen Clarke looks at what has really been going on since 1066 ...

    From the first descent of the larynx into the throat (why you can talk but your dog can't), to the fine lost art of swearing, Bryson tells the fascinating, often uproarious story of an inadequate, second-rate tongue of peasants that developed into one of the world's largest growth industries.

    The show celebrates design and architecture in all of its functional glory and accidental absurdity, with intriguing tales of both designers and the people impacted by their designs.Now, in The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to Hidden World of Everyday Design, host Roman Mars and coauthor Kurt Kohlstedt zoom in on the various elements that make our cities work, exploring the origins and other fascinating stories behind everything from power grids and fire escapes to drinking fountains and street signs. With deeply researched entries and beautiful line drawings throughout, The 99% Invisible City will captivate devoted fans of the show and anyone curious about design, urban environments, and the unsung marvels of the world around them.