Tracks on the Ocean (eBook)

A History of Trailblazing, Maps and Maritime Travel

SARA CAPUTO (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024
444 Seiten
ProFile (Verlag)
978-1-78283-887-6 (ISBN)

Infos

'Ingenious. Caputo picks out a fascinating path and leads readers along it with the confidence of a practised pilot' Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, author of 1492'Accessible and entertaining, as well as deeply erudite and constantly mind-expanding' Philip Ball, author of How Life WorksFrom their first appearance on Renaissance maps, linear tracks representing maritime voyages have shaped the way we see the world. But why do we depict journeys as lines, and what is their deeper meaning? Ferdinand Magellan's route to the Pacific embodied the promise of adventure and colonisation, while the scientific charts of the Royal Navy inspired others to plan conquests, navigate treacherous waters and establish settlements across the oceans.In Tracks on the Ocean, prize-winning historian Sara Caputo charts a hidden history of the modern world through the tracks left on maps and the sea. Taking us from ancient Greek itineraries to twenty-first-century digital mapping, via the voyages of Drake and Cook, the decks of Napoleonic warships and the boiler rooms of ocean liners, Caputo reveals how marks on maps have changed the course of modernity.

Autor

Dr Sara Caputo is a Senior Research Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge. A specialist in maritime and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history, she is the winner of numerous awards, including the Prince Consort and Thirlwall Prize. She has been a Visiting Fellow in Germany, California and at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

Rezensionen

A triumph ... an act of impressive scholarship

Full of extraordinary detail ... Caputo does a fine job in conveying the pioneering, fearless spirit of those early journeys, made into the unknown

Intriguing and original, Caputo's eventful voyage through the history of navigation has been researched with a depth as profound as the ocean, and has a scope and relevance that transcends the high seas

Sara Caputo had an enviably ingenious idea, which few could conceive and very few execute: a history of how people have kept records of routes, in defiance of trackless nature and deficient technology. With distant vision, broad scope and deep scholarship she picks out a fascinating path and leads readers along it with the fluency of a good guide and the confidence of a practised pilot

An engrossing and beautifully chartered literary journey through history, seamanship and maritime map-making

The best kind of history ... a dazzling piece of research which draws the reader in, engages them directly and challenges them to question how and what they see

An erudite and accomplished account of human wayfaring

Sara Caputo's fascinating story of the mapping of the oceans is full of intrigue, discovery, and drama. A deeply knowledgeable yet readable history of the cartography of water

Caputo takes a most ingenious topic, the foamy track of a ship, as a meditation on centuries of globalisation and imperialism. Her story of this constantly reinvented and reinscribed line of passage is a bracingly novel oceanic history. It also shows the origins, costs and legacies of human mobility: an urgent concern of our times

'An enthralling account of maritime wayfaring from Odysseus to Magellan to GPS. Accessible and entertaining, as well as deeply erudite and constantly mind-expanding. This is a model of how history should be written

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 29.8.2024
• Zusatzinfo: 16pp section colourB7W images throughout
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Hilfswissenschaften
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften ► Geografie / Kartografie
• Themenwelt: Technik
• Schlagworte: 18th Century History • A History of the World in 47 Borders • British Empire • Cartography • History books • Maps • Master and Commander • Napoleonic history • naval battles • ocean book • Prisoners of Geography • Royal Navy • submarine warfare • ' The Wager David Grann
• ISBN-10: 1-78283-887-2 / 1782838872
• ISBN-13: 978-1-78283-887-6 / 9781782838876