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"The Golden Atlas is a spectacular visual history of exploration and cartography, a treasure chest of adventures from the chronicles of global discovery, illustrated with a selection of the most beautiful maps ever created. The book reveals how the world came to be known, featuring a magnificent gallery of exceptionally rare hand-coloured antique maps, paintings and engravings, many of which can only be found in the author's collection. Arranged chronologically, the reader is taken on a breathtaking expedition through Ancient Babylonian geography and Marco Polo's journey to the Mongol Khan, on to buccaneers ransacking the Caribbean and the voyages of seafarers such as Captain Cook and fearless African pathfinders. Their stories are told in an engaging and compelling style, bringing vividly to life a motley collection of heroic explorers, treasure-hunters and death-dealing villains - all of them accompanied by eye-grabbing illustrations from rare maps, charts and manuscripts. The Golden Atlas takes you back to a world of darkness and peril, placing you on storm-lashed ships, frozen wastelands and the shores of hostile territories to see how the lines were drawn to form the shape of the modern world."--Provided by publisher.… (more)
User reviews
Having outlined Marco Polo’s travels along the Silk Road and the exploration of the Indian Ocean and Arabia by the Chinese Admiral, Zheng He, the book then turns to the search for sea routes to India and the Spice Isles by the Portuguese and Spanish. These sea voyages resulted in navigating the west coast of Africa and rounding of the Cape of Good Hope by the Portuguese to discover a sea route. Also due to a treaty between Spain and Portugal, it had been agreed that Spain would not use this route, so that Spanish explorers headed west to discover the West Indies (Caribbean, not India!), although the Portuguese discover Brazil (by accident, trying to sail around the Cape of Good Hope, but having sailed too far west to catch the current). The maps to illustrate these discoveries are sometimes dated far later, due to problems of survival, although this is not discussed.
There follows the voyages to Australia and New Zealand, exploration of the interior of Africa, and finally Arctic and Antarctic travels.
A useful introduction to the history of exploration, but really using maps only to illustrate that exploration.