"Countries die. Sometimes it's murder, sometimes it's by accident, and sometimes it's because they were so ludicrous they didn't deserve to exist in the first place. Occasionally they explode violently. A few slip away almost unnoticed. Often the cause of death is either "got too greedy" or "Napoleon turned up." Now and then they just hold a referendum and vote themselves out of existence. This is an atlas of 48 nations that fell off the map."--Dust...

This book analyses western maps made between the 13th and 17th centuries, and shows them to be copies of maps made by ancient explorers going back as far as 5000 years. Thirteenth- through fifteenth-century Portolan Charts of the Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea and the Atlantic coasts of Europe and North Africa reflect geography going back 5000 years.

Who are the extraordinary individuals that will take us on the next great space race, the next great human endeavor, our exploration and colonization of the planet Mars? And more importantly, how are they doing it? Acclaimed science writer Oliver Morton explores the peculiar and fascinating world of the new generation of explorers: geologists, scientists, astrophysicists and dreamers. Morton shows us the complex and beguiling role that mapping will...

The "utterly fascinating" untold story of Soviet Russia's global military mapping program-featuring many of the surprising maps that resulted (Marina Lewycka, author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian). From 1950 to 1990, the Soviet Army conducted a global topographic mapping program, creating large-scale maps for much of the world that included a diversity of detail that would have supported a full range of military planning. For big cities...

"A collection of astounding, fun and beautiful maps explaining everything about Planet Earth (and some other places!). It's a treasure trove of quirky and essential data, presented in fun, fascinating map form. If you want to know where the world's dog and cat breeds come from, what the Earth looked like 170 million years ago, where the best place in the world is to put a solar panel, how to find the hidden scene in the map of the USA, who brings...