Description: This book explores the effects that the Ptolemaic template developed by Claudius Ptolemy almost two thousand years ago had on the cartography and worldview of Europe through and beyond the age of European discovery. It shows how this template was refined and ultimately overcome.
Review Quotes: The way you picture the world-map doesn't just reflect the way you think about the planet: it affects how you divide it into regions and see their relative size and importance, foregrounding some places, while others recede or shrink. But Geoffrey Gunn scans the world objectively, in a single conspectus, and appreciates ways in which every region--especially Asia--has influenced others. Always commonsensical, always fair, always rooted in careful mastery of facts, his absorbing history of a world-ranging Western tradition of mapping helps us understand why we see our Earth as we do.