The best books about how maps and exploration changed the world

As a Venetian, diRobilant knows everything about the city and its history, and his writing is historically accurate and pulls the reader into unsolvable Venetian conundrums from long ago. This new book is about a series of old volumes that contain reprinted stories of exploration and travel (such as Marco Polo’s travels) that initiated travel writing as we know it.

I had written briefly about this little-known Venetian editor and publisher myself in Inveting the World, but diRobilant delves much deeper and wider into that history. A Master Class in engaging and informative nonfiction writing. 

This is a large-format book full of some of the most historically consequential and beautiful maps of the world. The pages also include invaluable close-ups of sections of various maps, which allow the viewer to dig in and look at details. And you can’t beat Professor Brotton for accuracy. Since I needed to write a chapter on the story of world maps and previously knew nothing about this history, I needed a “guide book,” and here it is.

The illustrations are so very well done that you feel like you are standing in a museum looking closely at these maps. And Brotton’s commentary explains why these maps are important. As an anthropologist, I especially appreciated the inclusion of so many non-Western world maps and learned so much of their history from this book. This book would also make a great present for children who are curious about the world and it’s geography.

Di Robilant again, of course. This book follows the trail of the story, apocryphal or not, made up or true, of the two Venetian Zen brothers who supposedly sailed to the North Sea in the 14th century. I loved this book because it is like a mystery story, full of questions with no real answers, and yet, in the end, I was convinced by Di Robilant’s investigation that Zens did indeed make it to Greenland and places North in the 1300s.

I really love a nonfiction book by an author who takes a sort of obscure topic and drills down to find the truth. The combination of geography, cartography, Venetian life, and mystery is indeed “irresistible.” 

When we think of maps, we usually assume they are about established geography, but that is completely wrong. Maps have been used to hold and elucidate everything about human behavior, especially politics and world affairs, and they vary dramatically in their presentations; the word “geopolitics” is spot on. 

You might envision the world as a blue, green, and brown sphere, but geographers (and world leaders and their kind) then load on every layer possible about how humans divide up this global space. Think of nations, names of continents, where people live, what they eat. And then think of maps that illustrate over the global landscape where we get sick (or not), what we eat, what we grow, how we earn money, where we shop—it’s mindboggling how geography can explain much of what people do, and how that can be exploited.  

During much of our lives, we don’t even think about it, but we should, because it’s all manipulation, and dangerously so at some level. Spend time with this book, and you will re-think how the world operates. And think of this, you North Americans and Europeans: some map of the world map made in Australia put Australia in the center, as it should be. Our Western view is not everybody’s view of the earth. 

As an anthropologist, I am always trying to enlighten Westerners that not everyone looks or acts as they do. So, I love this book with the usually great quality photos and accurate explanations by DK. Its point is not that you might have new kids in your classroom who don’t yet speak English and maybe eat food that you don’t recognize.

The point is that there are vast differences in the ways kids grow up around the world because there are so many different cultures and customs besides Western culture. In fact, Western culture only accounts for 1.2 billion people on the planet, while the remaining 6.8 live and act differently than we do. They dress, think, worship, play, and eat differently as well. And yet (also the point), we are all one species with so very much in common. 

Read this, look and look at the photos by yourself, and then find some children and show these photos and descriptions. You will have so much fun and possibly change little lives.