The Oxford Map Companion ─ One Hundred Sources in World History

Bringing together a rich and diverse collection of 100 historical maps from the Paleolithic to the present, The Oxford Map Companion: One Hundred Sources in World History illustrates how peoples and cultures throughout the human past have imagined their worlds. The collection--which includes many never-before published maps--spans a broad spectrum of human time and cultural diversity. It also features a wide range of map types from every continent, including stick charts, porcelain maps, maps created on sealskin, celestial maps, powder-horn and buckskin maps, silk "escape maps," radio maps, ordnance surveys, subway maps, and maps of the Internet.

Combining cutting-edge scholarship and accessibility, renowned scholar and award-wining author Patricia Seed presents new and innovative ways of looking at maps. Organized both chronologically and cartographically, nearly every historical map is accompanied by a locator map and/or schematic diagram--personally crafted by the author--that helps the reader to see the map in its geographical context and to grasp the meaning of its symbols, labels, and overall layout. A master chronology of world history in the front of the book and timelines at the beginning of each Part set the history of mapping in a global framework. Finally, every map includes a corresponding QR code that will allow readers to instantly explore a Google Earth outline of the area covered in the historical map on their smartphones.

Patricia Seed is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of several books including American Pentimento: The Pursuit of Riches and the Invention of "Indians" (2001) and Ceremonies of Possession in Europe's Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640 (1995). In recent years, Seed has been intensively involved in research on old and new questions in cartography. She bring her skills in the use of digital imaging technologies (GIS and graphic design software) to the study--not only to reformulate the questions of the history of map making--but to offer historical and comparative scholarship new tools of analysis and new ways of representing the knowledge that it produces.