It took thirty centuries to describe and depict the world.
Laurent Maréchaux retraces this lengthy odyssey from Homer to Vidal de la Blache by way of Herodotus, Mercator, and Humboldt,
providing portraits of genius geographers who contributed-as poets, philosophers, historians, mathematicians, astronomers, and geologists-to the gradual mapping of the world. Cartography is an inexhaustible source of wonder, and no book better demonstrates that than this brilliant work, sumptuously written, illustrated, and researched.