John Noble Wilford tells the story in its full historical sweep, beginning with the surprisingly accurate silk maps prepared by Chinese cartographers in the second century B.C. and the achievements of the ancient Greeks who first measured the size and shape of Earth. You'll read about medieval mapmakers who believed they had fixed the location of paradise; the great Renaissance seafarers whose exploits for the first time joined exploration and mapmaking; the Cassini family, who spent more than a century mapping the whole of France; and the daring explorers, from Lewis and Clark on, who mapped the American West. In three new chapters Wilford brings the story up to date, as he shows the impact of cutting-edge technologies that have revolutionized mapmaking and made it possible for cartographers to go where no one has been before, from the deepest reaches of the universe (where astronomers are mapping time as well as space) to the inside of the human brain.

It's a grand adventure, and Wilford captures it in all its excitement.