Status
Available
Call number
Publication
New York, New York : Penguin Books, 2014.
Description
"A fascinating look at twelve maps-from Ancient Greece to Google Earth-and how they changed our world In this masterful study, historian and cartography expert Jerry Brotton explores a dozen of history's most influential maps, from stone tablet to vibrant computer screen. Starting with Ptolemy, "father of modern geography," and ending with satellite cartography, A History of the World in 12 Maps brings maps from classical Greece, Renaissance Europe, and the Islamic and Buddhist worlds to life and reveals their influence on how we-literally-look at our present world. As Brotton shows, the long road to our present geographical reality was rife with controversy, manipulation, and special interests trumping science. Through the centuries maps have been wielded to promote any number of imperial, religious, and economic agendas, and have represented the idiosyncratic and uneasy fusion of science and subjectivity. Brotton also conjures the worlds that produced these notable works of cartography and tells the stories of those who created, used, and misused them for their own ends"-- "In this masterful study, historian and cartography expert Jerry Brotton explores a dozen of history's most influential maps, from stone tablet to vibrant computer screen. Starting with Ptolemy, "father of modern geography," and ending with satellite cartography, A History of the World in 12 Maps brings maps from classical Greece, Renaissance Europe, and the Islamic and Buddhist worlds to life and reveals their influence on how we--literally--look at our present world. As Brotton shows, the long road to our present geographical reality was rife with controversy, manipulation, and special interests trumping science. Through the centuries maps have been wielded to promote any number of imperial, religious, and economic agendas, and have represented the idiosyncratic and uneasy fusion of science and subjectivity. Brotton also conjures the worlds that produced these notable works of cartography and tells the stories of those who created, used, and misused them for their own ends"--… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member NielsenGW
Maps serve two functions. They give you information—where people have been, places people have mapped, and the names given to those places. They also give you a destination, they let the heart roam over distant lands, and hope for an adventurous future. This information and hope have driven human
The twelve maps that Brotton uses range from Ptolemy’s map conceived around 150 CE up through the maps created by Google Earth. Each map encompasses a trait of the age. For instance, Gerard Mercator’s 1569 world map embodies the tolerance of Dutch explorers, the Cassini family’s 1793 map of France tells just as much about the nationalism at play as it does about the mapmaking of the day, and the Peters Projection of 1973 starts to incorporate the equality movement into cartography. There’s just as much history as there is geography in this book, and it’s a delightfully full book. Brotton’s inclusion of different projections, mapping methods, and illustrations is quite appreciated. Believe it or not, there are books on geography out there without maps, and they can be incredibly frustrating. Brotton’s research is pretty wide-ranging and inclusive, so you can easily move your way to other sources if you want to. All in all, this was a very good book with a ton of information.
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history in more ways than we think. Beginning with a cuneiform clay tablet found in the site of the ancient city of Sippar in Babylonia, maps exist as an interesting window into how a civilization (or at least the mapmaker) views the world. In the 15th century, when the technology and means caught up to the desire to explore, the edges of the maps begin to be filled in and mankind got a truer picture of the world it inhabits. Jerry Brotton’s History of the World in Twelve Maps is a look at the world by investigating maps created at key points in history and what those maps say about the humans making them. The twelve maps that Brotton uses range from Ptolemy’s map conceived around 150 CE up through the maps created by Google Earth. Each map encompasses a trait of the age. For instance, Gerard Mercator’s 1569 world map embodies the tolerance of Dutch explorers, the Cassini family’s 1793 map of France tells just as much about the nationalism at play as it does about the mapmaking of the day, and the Peters Projection of 1973 starts to incorporate the equality movement into cartography. There’s just as much history as there is geography in this book, and it’s a delightfully full book. Brotton’s inclusion of different projections, mapping methods, and illustrations is quite appreciated. Believe it or not, there are books on geography out there without maps, and they can be incredibly frustrating. Brotton’s research is pretty wide-ranging and inclusive, so you can easily move your way to other sources if you want to. All in all, this was a very good book with a ton of information.
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LibraryThing member pbjwelch
It took me forever (OK, a couple of weeks) to finish this book because I kept flipping back to previous chapters because I wanted to review something or check something…in short, this is one terrific volume if you're a historian or interested in maps or anything in-between (navigation, wars,
Author Brotton has focused on 12 maps in this volume ranging from Ptolemy's classic Geographica through a number of similarly famous maps to Google Earth, which he defines as "part of a long and distinguished cartographic tradition of mapping geography onto commerce that stretches right back at least to al-Idrisi's regional maps of the commodities of the Mediterranean. It underlies the world maps of Ribeiro, driven by access to the commercial wealth of the Indonesian archipelago, Mercator's projection for navigators, Blaeu's atlases for the wealthy merchants and burghers of Holland, and even Halford Mackinder's world map of imperial conflict over increasingly competitive markets" (p. 431)--all maps he discusses at length in this work. Another chapter focuses on Peters' Projection of 1973, an atlas I received as a gift--as many others did in the 70s and 80s--which was one of the most bewildering set of maps I had ever seen. NOW I understand it.
This well-written, historical and story-rich volume is one of the best armchair books I've read in a long time. So many of these maps are familiar to many of us; to read of their origins and history (and eventual fate) is like discovering an ancestor's diary.
Engaging, fascinating, educational, insightful, enriching…my list of adjectives could continue almost as long as it took me to finally release this book, but it will be one I will return to frequently. It goes on the shelf right next to David Abulafia's superb The Great Sea, the history of the Mediterranean. A History of the World in Twelve Maps title makes my list of "100 Reference Books everyone should own."
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trade, colonies, adventure…). I've recommended it to my non-fiction book group and have bought it as a gift (despite its hefty size and price) for an intelligent teenage friend, and have had to hide it from my spouse who is waiting to read it himself.Author Brotton has focused on 12 maps in this volume ranging from Ptolemy's classic Geographica through a number of similarly famous maps to Google Earth, which he defines as "part of a long and distinguished cartographic tradition of mapping geography onto commerce that stretches right back at least to al-Idrisi's regional maps of the commodities of the Mediterranean. It underlies the world maps of Ribeiro, driven by access to the commercial wealth of the Indonesian archipelago, Mercator's projection for navigators, Blaeu's atlases for the wealthy merchants and burghers of Holland, and even Halford Mackinder's world map of imperial conflict over increasingly competitive markets" (p. 431)--all maps he discusses at length in this work. Another chapter focuses on Peters' Projection of 1973, an atlas I received as a gift--as many others did in the 70s and 80s--which was one of the most bewildering set of maps I had ever seen. NOW I understand it.
This well-written, historical and story-rich volume is one of the best armchair books I've read in a long time. So many of these maps are familiar to many of us; to read of their origins and history (and eventual fate) is like discovering an ancestor's diary.
Engaging, fascinating, educational, insightful, enriching…my list of adjectives could continue almost as long as it took me to finally release this book, but it will be one I will return to frequently. It goes on the shelf right next to David Abulafia's superb The Great Sea, the history of the Mediterranean. A History of the World in Twelve Maps title makes my list of "100 Reference Books everyone should own."
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LibraryThing member the.ken.petersen
This book does have some interesting things to say about maps but, why, oh why did someone decide to set it out in the style of a 1950's textbook? Maps are visual things and, as such, I would have expected this book to have numerous illustrations worked in to the body of the text: not so, one
This quickly becomes a very dry read: I may be learning, but it is not made a pleasurable experience. I am no expert on the history or indeed the lingua franca of geography cognoscenti and I found some of the terminology less than helpful. Perhaps I am being unfair, and this work is aimed at a readership with a greater knowledge of things cartographical but I am afraid that I did not make it to the end of this book.
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endures pages of written explanation followed by blocks of photographs which are too small to show detail.This quickly becomes a very dry read: I may be learning, but it is not made a pleasurable experience. I am no expert on the history or indeed the lingua franca of geography cognoscenti and I found some of the terminology less than helpful. Perhaps I am being unfair, and this work is aimed at a readership with a greater knowledge of things cartographical but I am afraid that I did not make it to the end of this book.
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LibraryThing member Steve38
A readable but authoritative book using the history of cartography to illustrate and comment on world history. The maps that societies produce are a good way of understanding how they see the world around them. The author has certainly done a good job but, as might be expected, it is a Euro-centric
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view with only very early middle eastern and one 15th century Korean map not coming from that tradition. It is reasonably well illustrated but as ever with a book on maps you could always ask for more. Although well referenced a glossary of cartographic terms would have been useful. Show Less
LibraryThing member passion4reading
I don’t like to write negative reviews of a product, especially books, but I was really struggling to find any redeeming features in A History of the World in Twelve Maps. The book starts with a very wordy introduction that incorporates philosophy, the Classics, theology and different creation
(This review was originally written as part of Amazon's Vine programme.)
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myths, etymology and history, as well as a glaring editorial error that should have been spotted way before its publication. In it, the author also offers a few thought-provoking comments, such as “A world view gives rise to a world map; but the world map in turn defines its culture’s view of the world. It is an exceptional act of symbiotic alchemy“ and “In the act of locating themselves on it, the viewer is at the same moment imaginatively rising above (and outside) it in a transcendent moment of contemplation, beyond time and space, seeing everything from nowhere“, but sadly these get swamped by the sheer amount of information Jerry Brotton is trying to get across. The second quote in particular evokes the desire to become immersed in the details of a map, but unfortunately for the reader the publisher has decided to skimp on the reproductions so that the maps getting the Brotton treatment are all grouped together in two sections in the book and are often pitifully reduced to near illegibility. The earliest surviving map from ancient Babylon barely gets a mention and the first chapter, devoted to Ptolemy’s Geography, though setting the blueprint for all modern maps by establishing the principles of latitude and longitude and defining geography as a discipline, actually isn’t a map at all but a scientific treatise. In examining the Geography, the author loses himself in detail, so that the result reads more like a doctoral thesis, complete with references and Greek terminology, than a book aimed at the general public. There is no narrative structure and it felt as if he was merely listing everything he’s ever read about the subject, without consideration for his readership; a proper discussion of Ptolemy’s work doesn’t start until 20+ pages into the chapter, and even then I found it extremely difficult to take on board his conclusions, as I was being bombarded with fact after fact and was suffering from information overload. Surely a writer of good non-fiction books must not only know what to include and how to present the information to the reader to best advantage, but also what to leave out; sadly, this is not the case here. His chapter on the Hereford mappamundi fared slightly better, but again the author made the mistake in indiscriminately listing snippets of history, theology and the Classics, therefore turning the usual enjoyment of reading and learning into a chore. As a result, I decided to give up on reading the other chapters in this substantial book, unable to face the remaining 400 or so pages in it. This resignation is the more annoying because I feel that with its chosen title, the publisher inevitably invites comparison with Neil MacGregor’s A History of the World in 100 Objects and loses out in both the quality of the writing and the reproductions of the artefacts. That’s a real shame, as the subject has great potential, but unfortunately the book fails to live up to its promise.(This review was originally written as part of Amazon's Vine programme.)
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LibraryThing member Eyejaybee
Neil MacGregor's recent project "A History of the World in 100 Objects", in which he catalogued a compelling perspective on world history through one hundred artefacts in the British Museum, has spawned a whole new approach. Professor Brotton adapts it here to spin a fascinating history of, among
The formula works very well. Professor Brotton recounts his exhaustive (and occasionally even a little exhausting) research and describes not just the world conveyed by the various maps that he considers but also the historic and political contexts against which they were created.
Cartographic mores have certainly changed. Nowadays we expect that the top of a map will always be the north. That is now an absolute given, to the extent that we rarely even need to be told of the fat. However, Muslim maps of the tenth and eleventh centuries tended to have the south at the top, while maps created in the European Christian tradition up until the early stages of the Renaissance .would always have the east at the top. Perhaps this influenced Tolkien because I am sure that I remember the dwarves in "The Hobbit" use a map of the Iron mountain that has the east to the top.
Brotton considers an engaging selection of maps ranging from a small clay tablet, found in Babylon, which is the world's oldest surviving map, through the mappamundi at Hereford Cathedral, via medieval maps of Kore and eastern China to the revolutionary Peters projection of which eighty millions copies have been sold since it first appeared in 1973. He finishes up with a run through digital maps and the gps revolution.
I did wonder, occasionally, whether Brotton just didn't know when to stop. He draws intriguing comparisons and raises some interesting questions, but he does labour his point unnecessarily at times and although, overall, I enjoyed the book there was also a sense almost of relief when I could finally put it away.
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other things, science, faith, colonial exploitation and propaganda hanging his story on a selection of maps from different eras, places and races. The formula works very well. Professor Brotton recounts his exhaustive (and occasionally even a little exhausting) research and describes not just the world conveyed by the various maps that he considers but also the historic and political contexts against which they were created.
Cartographic mores have certainly changed. Nowadays we expect that the top of a map will always be the north. That is now an absolute given, to the extent that we rarely even need to be told of the fat. However, Muslim maps of the tenth and eleventh centuries tended to have the south at the top, while maps created in the European Christian tradition up until the early stages of the Renaissance .would always have the east at the top. Perhaps this influenced Tolkien because I am sure that I remember the dwarves in "The Hobbit" use a map of the Iron mountain that has the east to the top.
Brotton considers an engaging selection of maps ranging from a small clay tablet, found in Babylon, which is the world's oldest surviving map, through the mappamundi at Hereford Cathedral, via medieval maps of Kore and eastern China to the revolutionary Peters projection of which eighty millions copies have been sold since it first appeared in 1973. He finishes up with a run through digital maps and the gps revolution.
I did wonder, occasionally, whether Brotton just didn't know when to stop. He draws intriguing comparisons and raises some interesting questions, but he does labour his point unnecessarily at times and although, overall, I enjoyed the book there was also a sense almost of relief when I could finally put it away.
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LibraryThing member steve.clason
Mr. Brotton considers a sequence of 12 carefully selected maps, from Ptolemy's Geography in 150 CE to the current version of Google Earth. He discusses the political and scientific context in which they were created, expending considerable effort analyzing the intellectual, call it the
The scholarship is impressive and the discussion thorough and clear, providing a broad appreciation of how embedded maps are in our lives and how that embedment changes. Unfortunately, at least in my reading, there wasn't a consistent theme or approach that caused the 12 explanations to hang together, and the narrative took up so much detail that I never acquired a birds-eye-view of maps or how we have used them.
I think the book can be summed up in this quote (from the last page): "Every culture has a specific way of seeing and representing its world through maps, and this is as true for Google Earth as it is for the Hereford mappamundi and the Kagnido world map."
That's true, no doubt, but it's not much to get out of 445 pages.
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"philosophical" for lack of a better word, assumptions underlying the creation of the map and how it was thought of and used during its heyday.The scholarship is impressive and the discussion thorough and clear, providing a broad appreciation of how embedded maps are in our lives and how that embedment changes. Unfortunately, at least in my reading, there wasn't a consistent theme or approach that caused the 12 explanations to hang together, and the narrative took up so much detail that I never acquired a birds-eye-view of maps or how we have used them.
I think the book can be summed up in this quote (from the last page): "Every culture has a specific way of seeing and representing its world through maps, and this is as true for Google Earth as it is for the Hereford mappamundi and the Kagnido world map."
That's true, no doubt, but it's not much to get out of 445 pages.
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LibraryThing member cyclops1771
As a map enthusiast, LOVED this book. This book reviews the course of history of mapmaking and cartography, the uses of maps, and the spatial, political, and spiritual thinking that drove the creation of each of these historically important maps.
LibraryThing member Helenliz
This is an interesting surmise that follows in the vein of recent books looking at the evolution of a item through time. It's not so much a history of the world, so much as a history of the way we've seen the world and tried to represent it. The maps selected were quite varied, some more famous
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than others. The chapters are arranged in date order, but each is assigned a thematic title. I'm not sure that necessarily works well, but it does go together with the concept that the maps are all a product of their time and contain more information than just what is where in the world. Each is a product of its time and that viewpoint is reflected in the map that is produced. The chapters contain sufficient detail that the map itself is put into context of its time and the maps that have been previously discussed. There was a summary chapter at the end, and it might have been nice had this explained why the maps selected were chosen, and what other examples might have been used. The paperback had the colour illustrations in 2 lots, and it might have been nice had the text actually referenced the images, but that's a minor quibble. There is a lot of detail in here and it's a very interesting surmise. Worth reading. Show Less
LibraryThing member JBD1
This book doesn't exactly do what its title suggests it will, but it couldn't possibly do that anyway, so let's just set that aside as hyperbole. Brotton does offer profiles of important maps and atlases from Ptolemy to Google Earth, using each as a jumping-off point to explore an aspect of
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mapmaking as a social, political, religious, or technological exercise. it can be a bit dense, and better integration of the illustrations would have been helpful, but the text held my attention throughout and the book would likely be of interest to readers with a general interest in cartographic history. Show Less
LibraryThing member JBD1
This book doesn't exactly do what its title suggests it will, but it couldn't possibly do that anyway, so let's just set that aside as hyperbole. Brotton does offer profiles of important maps and atlases from Ptolemy to Google Earth, using each as a jumping-off point to explore an aspect of
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mapmaking as a social, political, religious, or technological exercise. it can be a bit dense, and better integration of the illustrations would have been helpful, but the text held my attention throughout and the book would likely be of interest to readers with a general interest in cartographic history. Show Less
LibraryThing member emilyesears
I feel like this book is too dense for me in this point in my life.
LibraryThing member tronella
An interesting look at some iconic maps and the historical settings in which they were developed. Unfortunately, there are quite a few proofing errors ("Amercia", mixing up bit and byte, punctuation errors) that made this quite tough going for me, especially since it's already so dense. It also
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seemed to me that the author didn't really understand what he was talking about in parts of the chapter on Google Earth. Still, pretty good on the whole. Show Less
LibraryThing member PDCRead
In lots of ways this is a fascinating book, picking up on the trend to look at a historical subject in the context of a single item or area. It was first started by the book A History of the World in 100 Objects.
There are lots of images of ancient maps, the detail and depth that the book goes into
What makes this book so difficult to read is the text; it feels like it is written like a academic paper most of the time. It does improve towards the end, but it did make it very hard reading for most of the book, and that is a shame.
There are lots of images of ancient maps, the detail and depth that the book goes into
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are impressive, and the credentials of the author are impeccable. And yet it doesn’t work for me. There is a mass of detail in here, from some of the very first maps by Ptolemy and other significant ones like the Mappi Mundi in Hereford cathedral, to the Mercer projection and the origins of the OS, and onto Google earth. It covers all the really important maps and individuals involved in the creation of those maps, and has some superb images of the maps in colour.What makes this book so difficult to read is the text; it feels like it is written like a academic paper most of the time. It does improve towards the end, but it did make it very hard reading for most of the book, and that is a shame.
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LibraryThing member AmphipodGirl
It’s intelligent and scholarly, but too dry for my. I haven’t finished it, don’t know if I will
Subjects
Awards
PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize (Shortlist — 2013)
Language
Physical description
xix, 521 p.; 23 cm
ISBN
9780143126027