As long as there have been maps, cartographers have grappled with the impossibility of portraying the earth in two dimensions. To solve this problem mapmakers have created hundreds of map projections. John P. Snyder discusses and illustrates the hundreds of known map projections from before 500 B.C. to the present.

"The most comprehensive collection of diagrams of the projections used in world mapping". -- D. H. Maling, Nature

"The most exhaustive, detail-packed, well-written, and well-illustrated compendium of information on the origin and use of map projections ever published". -- Mark P. Kumler, Cartographic Perspectives

"The author has to be credited for his exhaustive and well-structured survey of this period and for making a large volume of obscure and rather esoteric material accessible to a non-specialist audience. In this way the book is unique and a must for everyone who is interested in map projections". -- Frank Canters, Geographical Journal