Europeans have north at the top of their maps; Islam looked south; the Hebrew culture looked east; the Aztecs had five points. What are compass points? How do they vary and function?
Not so much a history of maps, this is a riveting account of the ways in which the carefully plotted lines of explorers have transformed the world. From Magellan and Cook to the distortions ... read more
In the 1550s, a Venetian public servant produced three anonymous volumes of geographical data, some of it well known, some hitherto secret: Renaissance Wikileaks.
How the daughter of Babur, first Mughal Emperor, wrangled her way out of the harem (for a while) to travel around India, to Persia and beyond. Based on her own account.
The author of Oblomov spent the years 1852-1854 as secretary to Admiral Putyatin on board the Pallada; they sailed to Java, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Shanghai, the Philippines and Korea. ... read more
The story of the first contact between the Haida and other indigenous peoples of the Pacific North West with Europeans - and what came after. Told very powerfully in a graphic form that comb... read more
Fritz D?rries was a German entomologist who first travelled to Siberia as a young man in 1877. He went on to spend a total of twenty-two years there, encountering tigers, bandits, vipers and... read more
Arbugaeva was born in Yakutia, Siberia, so she knows well the ghostly, desolate beauty of that part of the world and the hardships of life there. Her photographs are superb.
In 1930 a (very) young British explorer led a small team to explore the eastern coast of Greenland - an unknown expanse, mysterious even to the Inuits.
Is it to exalt the mountain or the climber that the mountain should be climbed? Or to gain a good vantage point for telling things, pace James Baldwin?
Drawing on the Kon-Tiki Museum archive in Oslo and illustrated with many of Heyerdahl's photographs, this is published on the 75th anniversary of the Norwegian explorer's astonishing and per... read more
The first biography of the extraordinary writer who died in 2020. An officer in the 9th Lancers, Morris was posted to Trieste in 1945. He was the only journalist to accompany the 1953 Britis... read more
The Endurance was found in March of this year. Mensun Bound, a leading marine archaeologist, was the Director of Explorations of the two expeditions that set out to find it in 2019 and 2022.... read more
Louis-Antoine de Bougainville and Pierre Magnol to Sir David Attenborough, via Lady Gaga... The author is, amongst other roles, the president of the Linnaean Society.
Thorogood's version of 'up hill and down dale' takes him over cliffs and up volcanoes - all in the pursuit of pitcher plants, irises, orchids... Illustrated by the author.
A collection of essays about this most extraordinary C17th woman, artist, traveller and naturalist; looks at her methods and materials, her journey to Suriname, her entomological studies, he... read more
Essays on cultural and artistic exchange in the age of imperialism as European powers vied for domination of the oceanic routes between Asia and the Americas. Illustrated.
A brilliant narrative of the interconnected lives of two Renaissance Portuguese men whose travels to India and China unseated contemporary certainties. Dazzling.