Mercator : The Man Who Mapped the Planet – Nicholas Crane

Description

Gerhard Mercator (1512-1594) was born at the dawn of the Age of Discovery, when the world was beginning to be discovered and carved up by navigators, geographers and cartographers. Mercator was the greatest and most ingenious cartographer of them all: it was he who coined the word ‘atlas’ and solved the riddle of converting the three-dimensional globe into a two-dimensional map while retaining true compass bearings. It is Mercator’s Projection that NASA is using today to map Mars. How did Mercator reconcile his religious beliefs with a science that would make Christian maps obsolete? How did a man whose imagination roamed continents endure imprisonment by the Inquisition? Crane brings this great man vividly to life, underlying it with the maps themselves: maps that brought to a rapt public wonders as remarkable as today’s cyber-world. Nick Crane’s new book is a scintillating account of the climax of the map-makers’ century (and of Mercator’s life) – the miraculous compression of the planet which revolutionized navigation and has become the most common worldview we have.
First Edition, fourth impression. Publisher’s blue paper covered boards with gilt lettering to spine, and map illustrations to endpapers. Clear, removable, archival protective sleeve fitted to dust-jacket. 348 pages. Sixteen colour plates. A book in Fine condition in a Fine dust-jacket which is not price-clipped. Like new