The British Library has one of the largest and most impressive cartographic collections in the world, including manuscript maps and atlases, administrative records and plans, large-scale surveys, and digital maps. From this rich resource, 100 fascinating examples ranging from world and city maps, celestial and sea charts, literary and statistical maps, curiosities and fake maps have been selected as the basis for this puzzle book. Each map is faithfully reproduced with a description of its creation and use, followed by details showing areas of particular interest. Readers are asked to scrutinize the maps to answer a series of historical and geographical questions, all the while enjoying new perspectives on the world we live in provided by our eclectic and extensive archive.

An exploration of the ways early modern European artists have visualized continents through the female (sometimes male) body to express their perceptions of newly encountered peoples. Often stereotypical, these personifications are however more complex than what they seem.

The cover image, World Map by Fra Mauro c. 1450, is one of the most important and famous maps of all time. This monumental map of the world was created by the monk Fra Mauro in his monastery on the island of San Michele in the Venetian lagoon. Now the centrepiece of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in St Marc’s Square in Venice, the map in its nearly 600-year history has never left Venice – until now. Renowned for its sheer size - over 2.3 metres square - and stunning colours, the map was made at a time of transition between the medieval world view and new knowledge uncovered by the great voyages of discovery. Brilliantly painted and illuminated on sheets of oxhide, the sphere of the Earth is surrounded by the sphere of the Ocean in the ancient way. Yet Fra Mauro included the latest information on exploration by Portuguese and Arab navigators. Commissioned by King Afonso V of Portugal, it is the last of the great medieval world maps to inspire navigators in the Age of Discovery to explore beyond the Indian Ocean.

"In an extraordinary discovery, part of Canada's missing heritage has been found at the British Library in London. Among this collection of 40,000 items of Canadiana are 4,000 lost photographs dating from the period of 1895 to 1924. This is the story of that collection, those photographs and, more importantly, the story in pictures of Canada at a time when the new nation - bursting with hope and promise - was emerging."--front jacket flap.

Where is paradise? It always seems to be elsewhere, inaccessible, outside of time. Either it existed yesterday or it will return tomorrow; it may be just around the corner, on a remote island, beyond the sea. Across a wide range of cultures, paradise is located in the distant past, in a longed-for future, in remote places or within each of us. In particular, people everywhere in the world share some kind of nostalgia for an innocence experienced at the beginning of history. For two millennia, learned Christians have wondered where on earth the primal paradise could have been located. Where was the idyllic Garden of Eden that is described in the Bible? In the Far East? In equatorial Africa? In Mesopotamia? Under the sea? Where were Adam and Eve created in their unspoiled perfection? Maps of Paradise charts the diverse ways in which scholars and mapmakers from the eighth to the twenty-first century rose to the challenge of identifying the location of paradise on a map, despite the certain knowledge that it was beyond human reach. Over one hundred illustrations celebrate this history of a paradox: the mapping of the unmappable. It is also a mirror to the universal dream of perfection and happiness, and the yearning to discover heaven on earth.