Atlas: A World of Maps from the British Library

by Tom Harper

From the publication in 1595 of the first "atlas" by the Flemish cartographer Gerhard Mercator, the term has become a universally adopted title for books containing accurate, uniform and evenly spread maps of all or some of the world. This is an atlas with a difference. Few of the maps in this book could reasonably be called "accurate" in the modern sense and could almost certainly not be used to plan a journey. Yet this atlas can help us to travel in a way that regular atlases do not, because by looking at old maps and getting to know their stories we can be transported back to the times in which they were made. The generous, full-color illustrations of each map in this large-format book range from the Klencke Atlas (1660) to Hokusai’s map of China (1840–41), from a 1682 pirate map of Guatemala to 20th-century cartographic postcards featuring maps of Australia.

272 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2020

About the author

Tom Harper was born in West Germany in 1977 and grew up in Germany, Belgium and America; he now lives in England. He is chair of the Crime Writers' Association and also a member of the Historical Novels Society and the Society of Authors.

Tom Harper also writes historical adventures as Edwin Thomas.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.