On the map : why the world looks the way it does / Simon Garfield.

Includes bibliography and index.

1. What Great Minds Knew: How the ancient Greeks - Eratosthenes and Ptolemy - first worked out the size and shape of the world and our place upon it.--2. The Men Who Sold the World: The day Britain's greatest cartographic treasure - the medieval Mappa Mundi - went to the auction houses to fix a leaky roof
It's 1250, Do You Know Where You Are?.--3. The World Takes Shape: The world centres on Jerusalem - and the Poles appear
Here Be Dragons.--4. Venice, China and a Trip to the Moon: How the Italians became the world's greatest map makers, and then the Germans, and then the Dutch. And how a Venetian friar discovered the secrets of the East and ended up on the Moon.--5. The Mystery of Vinland: Did Norse sailors really reach and map America before Columbus? Or is the world's most curious map fakery's finest hour?.--6. Welcome to Amerigo: In which Ptolemy reappears in Europe and America gets named after the wrong man. California as an Island.--7. What's the Good of Mercator?: How the world looked in 1569 - and today, even if the UN still favours the Postel Azimuthal Equidistant. Keeping it Quiet: Drake's Silver Voyage.--8. The World in a Book: In which the Atlas becomes a craze in seventeenth-century Holland, is adopted by The Times, and then turns to agit-propLions, Eagles and Gerrymanders.--9. Mapping a Cittee (without forder troble): London gets the map bug, too, pioneers street mapping, and John Ogilby charts the course of every major road in Britannia.--10. Six Increasingly Coordinated Tales of the Ordnance Survey: Britain, spurred by Jacobite revolt, makes the Ordnance Survey, extending to India. But what is the symbol for a picnic site?
A Nineteenth-Century Murder Map.--11. The Legendary Mountains of Kong: How an impassable mountain range spread and spread, until a French army officer found it wasn't there. The Lowdown Lying Case of Benjamin Morrell.--12. Cholera and the Map that Stopped It: How mapping played its part in identifying the cause of the disease. Across Australia with Burke and Wills.--13. X Marks the Spot: Treasure Island: Treasure maps in literature and life.--14. The Worst Journey in the World to the Last Place to Be Mapped: How explorers found the South Pole without a map, and named the region after their families, friends and enemies. Charles Booth Thinks You're Vicious.--15. Mrs P and the A-Z: The woman who reputedly walked 23,000 London streets may have walked considerably less. The Biggest Map of All: Beck's London Tube.--16. Maps in All Our Hands: A Brief History of the Guidebook: The majestic fold-out engravings of Murray and Baedeker give way to another cartographic dark age. J.M. Barrie Fails to Fold a Pocket Map.--17. Casablanca, Harry Potter and Where Jennifer Aniston Lives: In which the Muppets perfect travel by map and we stalk the stars. A Hareraising Masquerade.--18. How to Make a Very Big Globe: From scratch ... when you used to run a bowling alley. Churchill's Map Room.--19. The Biggest Map Dealer, the Biggest Map Thief: How tempting are maps - and just what kind of dealers and thieves do they attract?. Women Can't Read Maps. Oh, Really?.--20. Driving Into Lakes: How Sat Nav Put the World in a Box: How we learnt to watch the dullest flight movie ever - and, with GPS, the Dutch once again took over the world's mapping. The Canals of Mars.--21. Pass Go and Proceed Direct to Skyrim: Maps as games, from jigsaw puzzles to Risk, and why computer games may be the future of cartography.--22. Mapping the Brain: What taxi drivers have to offer the world of the neuroscientist.

Maps fascinate us. They chart our understanding of the world and they log our progress, but above all they tell our stories. From the early sketches of philosophers and explorers through to Google Maps and beyond, Simon Garfield examines how maps both relate and realign our history. His compelling narratives range from the quest to create the perfect globe to the challenges of mapping Africa and Antarctica, from spellbinding treasure maps to the naming of America, from Ordnance Survery to Monopoly and Skyrim, and from rare map dealers to cartographic frauds. En route, there are 'pocket map' tales of dragons and undergrounds, a nineteenth century murder map, research on the different ways that men and women approach a map, and an explanation of the curious long-term cartographic role played by animals.