Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Chronicle Books (2018), Edition: Illustrated, 256 pages
Description
"[This book] is a guide to the world not as it is, but as it was imagined to be. It's a world of ghost islands, invisible mountain ranges, mythical civilizations, ship-wrecking beasts, and other fictitious features introduced on maps and atlases through mistakes, misunderstanding, fantasies, and outright lies. This ... book collects and explores the colorful histories behind a striking range of real antique maps that are all in some way a little too good to be true"--Amazon.com.
User reviews
LibraryThing member parker
This is an absolutely gorgeous edition of maps and particularly the curiosities, oddities, and embellishments added to antique cartography -- mermaids, serpents, sea monsters, made-up or imagined lands, but also maps that fitted the mindset of their day and not the hard facts of where land and sea
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really are. The pictures are so beautifully reproduced (the end papers alone would be worth having a copy of the book for!) that even without the text explaining and tying everything together this would be a wonderful coffee table book. With the text, it is worth having an any library of travel, antiquities, or the beauty of the printed word. Show Less
LibraryThing member janerawoof
Absolutely stunning atlas of "places that never were." Gorgeous coffee table book of fictitious places accompanied by delightful cartographic oddities and pictures of bizarre humanoids attested to by such people as Pliny [who I think accepted everyone's description of something at face value.]
Highly recommended.
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These fictitious places can be traced to several factors: myth, legend, or religion; someone's honest mistake; some places dreamed up by someone wanting fame and fortune from the "discovery". Although most of these places have proven to be imaginary upon investigation, even today with satellites, we still wonder about the existence of a few. I feel it best to dip into the text, not read straight through. I did like the feature of most of the maps; besides the complete map, there was an insert of the specific location with a line pointing to its place on the map.Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member bcquinnsmom
My many thanks to the publisher and to the powers that be at LibraryThing for my copy.
In the introduction to this book, the author says that
"This is an atlas of the world -- not as it ever existed, but as it was thought to be. The countries, islands, cities, mountains, rivers, continents and races
This book is not only filled with photos of "the greatest cartographic phantoms ever to haunt the maps of history," but also comes with a fair bit of the history of these "phantoms" that reveals quite a lot about their respective provenances and most especially the influence that mapping them would come to have on future adventurers and explorers. It goes on to explore why these nonexistent places began to be mapped in the first place, incorporating elements of mythology, religion, and superstition, but also physical phenomena such as the Fata Morgana. Then there are a few stories of the fraudsters who felt no compunction about inventing islands or countries either for fame or for cash, as in the example of "Sir" Gregor MacGregor, who set up a scheme involving land ownership in the Territory of Poyais, which appeared on an 1822 map of central America's Mosquitia region.
The Phantom Atlas is so very nicely done and I'm not simply referring to its beautiful, giftworthy quality. It is perfect for people who appreciate the artistic quality of the maps that the author's used here and even more so for people like me who enjoy the history behind them. Some of these accounts are so strange that they could seriously be the basis of pulp fiction, historical fiction, speculative fiction or even horror stories. The dustjacket blurb refers to this book a "brilliant collection," and I couldn't agree more.
In the introduction to this book, the author says that
"This is an atlas of the world -- not as it ever existed, but as it was thought to be. The countries, islands, cities, mountains, rivers, continents and races
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collected in this book are all entirely fictitious; and yet each was for a time -- sometimes for centuries -- real. How? Because they existed on maps." This book is not only filled with photos of "the greatest cartographic phantoms ever to haunt the maps of history," but also comes with a fair bit of the history of these "phantoms" that reveals quite a lot about their respective provenances and most especially the influence that mapping them would come to have on future adventurers and explorers. It goes on to explore why these nonexistent places began to be mapped in the first place, incorporating elements of mythology, religion, and superstition, but also physical phenomena such as the Fata Morgana. Then there are a few stories of the fraudsters who felt no compunction about inventing islands or countries either for fame or for cash, as in the example of "Sir" Gregor MacGregor, who set up a scheme involving land ownership in the Territory of Poyais, which appeared on an 1822 map of central America's Mosquitia region.
The Phantom Atlas is so very nicely done and I'm not simply referring to its beautiful, giftworthy quality. It is perfect for people who appreciate the artistic quality of the maps that the author's used here and even more so for people like me who enjoy the history behind them. Some of these accounts are so strange that they could seriously be the basis of pulp fiction, historical fiction, speculative fiction or even horror stories. The dustjacket blurb refers to this book a "brilliant collection," and I couldn't agree more.
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LibraryThing member RickLA
Receiving this book, I found such a rich collection of "phantom" maps such that, even for a cartophile like me, I was surprised and delighted to make my way through them. Because the table of contents is in alphabetical order, the maps roam around the globe at will. So it is up to the reader to
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decide how to attack this compact but dense volume. Every continent and corner of the world is represented here. The history absorbs you and draws you in, leading to ideas of further exploration of the many areas and topics included. I would heartily recommend this book to anyone who loves to pore over maps, charts, and drawings. Exploration of the world was never more fun. Show Less
LibraryThing member Gryphon-kl
This book is a collection of some of the more interesting places (and, in a few cases, creatures) that were shown on maps despite never actually existing (or being very different from how they were drawn, in the cases of the islands of California and Korea). The reasons for these errors range from
Each entry has a history of the origins of the belief in the location, its subsequent history as it showed up on additional maps and records (sometimes drifting as evidence made it clear that it wasn’t where it had been thought), and the eventual debunking (or, in one case, the possibility that an island had existed but sank), along with the approximate longitude and latitude of the place, other names for it, and some maps of the place and related illustrations.
All-in-all, this is probably worth it if the subject sounds interesting. I did reduce my rating due to a couple of problems, however. One is that a production error results in the entry for Buss Island being cut off in mid-sentence near the end. The other, which was probably unavoidable, is that significant parts of larger maps (those taking up two pages) get lost in the gutter, impossible to see if one is unwilling to break the spine (and maybe even if one is willing to; I can’t say since I wasn’t). Neither of these seriously detract from the book, though.
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honest mistakes and wishful thinking to faulty theories all the way to outright criminality, but they combine to make quite a history of how things weren’t and how some of these persisted (occasionally into this century).Each entry has a history of the origins of the belief in the location, its subsequent history as it showed up on additional maps and records (sometimes drifting as evidence made it clear that it wasn’t where it had been thought), and the eventual debunking (or, in one case, the possibility that an island had existed but sank), along with the approximate longitude and latitude of the place, other names for it, and some maps of the place and related illustrations.
All-in-all, this is probably worth it if the subject sounds interesting. I did reduce my rating due to a couple of problems, however. One is that a production error results in the entry for Buss Island being cut off in mid-sentence near the end. The other, which was probably unavoidable, is that significant parts of larger maps (those taking up two pages) get lost in the gutter, impossible to see if one is unwilling to break the spine (and maybe even if one is willing to; I can’t say since I wasn’t). Neither of these seriously detract from the book, though.
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LibraryThing member Capybara_99
This is a great book. Each entry is a few pages about some place (or occasionally some people or animals) that was represented on maps of the past but which doesn't exist, at least as represented. Examples: Atlantis (doesn't exist); California (exists, but isn't an island.) The entries are concise
The book is handsome. Lots of illustrations of the old maps. Maybe a bit hard to read in detail, but judicious use of blown-up insets help a lot.
I recommend the book if you are open to the romance of maps or the romance of places which didn't exist but maybe should have.
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but informative and well-researched. The descriptions of how the items came to be believed in, charted and mapped, carried on in subsequent maps, and eventually dropped, is thorough and interesting. And the author has a good eye for absurd or interesting detail about the fictitious lands themselves.The book is handsome. Lots of illustrations of the old maps. Maybe a bit hard to read in detail, but judicious use of blown-up insets help a lot.
I recommend the book if you are open to the romance of maps or the romance of places which didn't exist but maybe should have.
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LibraryThing member Autolykos
A wonderful full color book for all those who love maps, and who love their insight into the history of the period they were created in. Map-heads will love this as a gift. My husband has been known to zone out in front of a map for hours at a time. He loves this book as it is great read.
LibraryThing member MuuMuuMousie
This book is amazing! Edward Brooke-Hitching has written an atlas of cartography’s mistakes, but you don’t need to have any background knowledge of history or map-making in order to appreciate this wonderful collection. The author does a fantastic job of explaining these histories to a lay
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audience, and he is very succinct, devoting only a few pages to each blunder. The stories are interesting, covering a broad range of topics: islands that probably existed once but have been swallowed by the ocean, mountains that never were, rival explorers whose “discoveries” outdid each other, races of giants, mythical sea creatures, lost continents, and so much more. I like the author’s tone very much; he does a good job of presenting the facts objectively, but the style is still very readable and, at times, funny. I also like that the content is laid out alphabetically, rather than by type of mistake; this keeps the content varied. The images are beautiful, with clear reproductions of very old maps. All in all, thoroughly enjoyable! Show Less
LibraryThing member murderbydeath
Everybody who isn't me knows an atlas is a reference, not something to be read cover-to-cover. Me? I had to read it cover to cover, which made this gorgeous, well-written, informative book feel more like a chore than it should have.
This is an atlas of all the places on the maps throughout history
Each entry gets at least a spread and the old maps included (in color where applicable) are gorgeous; almost worth the price of the book on their own.
If you love maps, or geography, this book is beautiful and worth a look; even though I'm glad to finally finish it, it's something I'll treasure and look at again and again.
This is an atlas of all the places on the maps throughout history
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that never existed. Atlantis will be the first example that comes to many minds, but there are so many more. You wouldn't think maps would be enduring evidence of the human ability to spin a yarn but our ability to make stuff up is timeless.Each entry gets at least a spread and the old maps included (in color where applicable) are gorgeous; almost worth the price of the book on their own.
If you love maps, or geography, this book is beautiful and worth a look; even though I'm glad to finally finish it, it's something I'll treasure and look at again and again.
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Language
Original language
English
Physical description
256 p.; 10.05 inches
ISBN
1452168407 / 9781452168401
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