On the map : a mind-expanding exploration of the way the world looks

Cartography enthusiasts rejoice: the bestselling author of Just My Type reveals the fascinating relationship between man and map.

Simon Garfield's Just My Type illuminated the world of fonts and made everyone take a stand on Comic Sans and care about kerning. Now Garfield takes on a subject even dearer to our fanatical human hearts: maps.

Imagine a world without maps. How would we travel? Could we own land? What would men and women argue about in cars? Scientists have even suggested that mapping--not language--is what elevated our prehistoric ancestors from ape-dom. Follow the history of maps from the early explorers' maps and the awe-inspiring medieval Mappa Mundi to Google Maps and the satellite renderings on our smartphones, Garfield explores the unique way that maps relate and realign our history--and reflect the best and worst of what makes us human.

Featuring a foreword by Dava Sobel and packed with fascinating tales of cartographic intrigue, outsize personalities, and amusing "pocket maps" on an array of subjects from how to fold a map to the strangest maps on the Internet, On the Map is a rich historical tapestry infused with Garfield's signature narrative flair. Map-obsessives and everyone who loved Just My Type will be lining up to join Garfield on his audacious journey through time and around the globe.

• For the Love of Maps: Foreword p. 11 Dava Sobel
• Introduction: The Map That Wrote Itself p. 15
• 1 What Great Minds Knew p. 21
• 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 p. 42
• 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? p. 58
• 3 The World Takes Shape p. 63
• The world centers on Jerusalem-and the Poles appear.
• Here Be Dragons p. 72
• 4 Venice, China and a Trip to the Moon p. 75
• How the Italians became the world's greatest mapmakers, 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 p. 87
• 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 p. 103
• In which Ptolemy reappears in Europe and America gets named after the wrong man.
• California as an Island p. 121
• 7 What's the Good of Mercator? p. 125
• How the world looked in 1569-and today, even if the UN still favors the Postel Azimuthal Equidistant.
• Keeping It Quiet: Drake's Silver Voyage p. 135
• 8 The World in a Book p. 140
• In which the Atlas becomes a craze in seventeenth-century Holland, is adopted by The Times, and then turns to agitprop.
• Lions, Eagles and Gerrymanders p. 160
• 9 Mapping a Cittee (without forder troble) p. 167
• 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 p. 181
• 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 p. 200
• 11 The Legendary Mountains of Kong p. 204
• How an impassable mountain range spread and spread, until a French army officer found it wasn't there.
• The Low-down Lying Case of Benjamin Morrell p. 220
• 12 The Opening of America and the Gridding of Manhattan p. 223
• How Lewis and Clark filled out the American canvas, and how New York plotted its future.
• 13 Cholera and the Map that Stopped It p. 235
• How mapping played its part in identifying the cause of the disease.
• Across Australia with Burke and Wills p. 246
• 14 "X" Marks the Spot: Treasure Island p. 252
• Treasure maps in literature and life.
• J.M. Barrie Fails to Fold a Pocket Map p. 267
• 15 The Worst Journey in the World to the Last Place to Be Mapped p. 269
• 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 p. 288
• 16 Maps in All Our Hands: A Brief History of the Guidebook p. 293
• The majestic foldout engravings of Murray and Baedeker give way to another cartographic dark age.
• The Biggest Map of All: Beck's London Tube p. 307
• 17 Casablanca, Harry Potter and Where Jennifer Aniston Lives p. 313
• In which the Muppets perfect travel by map and we stalk the stars.
• A Hare-raising Masquerade p. 324
• 18 How to Make a Very Big Globe p. 327
• From scratch ... when you used to run a bowling alley.
• Churchill's Map Room p. 347
• 19 The Biggest Map Dealer, the Biggest Map Thief p. 352
• How tempting are maps-and just what kind of dealers and thieves do they attract?
• Women Can't Read Maps. Oh, Really? p. 366
• 20 Driving into Lakes: How GPS Put the World in a Box p. 372
• How we learned to watch the dullest in-flight movie ever-and, with GPS, the Dutch once again took over the world's mapping.
• The Canals of Mars p. 385
• 21 Pass Go and Proceed Directly to Skyrim p. 394
• Maps as games, from jigsaw puzzles to Risk, and why computer games may be the future of cartography.
• 22 Mapping the Brain p. 410
• What taxi drivers have to offer the world of the neuroscientist.
• Epilogue: The Instant, Always-On, Me-Mapping of Everywhere p. 424
• How the Internet changed everything.
• Acknowledgments p. 444
• Bibliography p. 446
• Picture Credits p. 449
• Index p. 450