From the New York Times bestselling author of A History of the World in 12 Maps, this is the revelatory history of the four cardinal directions that have oriented and defined our place on the globe for millennia

North, south, east, and west: almost all societies use these four cardinal directions to orientate themselves and to understand who they are by projecting where they are. For millennia, these four directions have been foundational to our travel, navigation, and exploration, and are central to the imaginative, moral, and political geography of virtually every culture in the world. Yet they are far more subjective--and sometimes contradictory--than we might realize.

Four Points of the Compass leads us on a journey of directional discovery. Societies have understood and defined directions in very different ways based on their locations in time and space. Historian Jerry Brotton reveals why Hebrew culture privileges east; why Renaissance Europeans began drawing north at the top of their maps; why early Islam revered the south; why the Aztecs used five color-coded cardinal directions; and why no societies, primitive or modern, have ever orientated themselves westwards. In doing so, politically-loaded but widely used terms such as the Middle East, the Global South, the West Indies, the Orient, and even the western world take on new meanings. Who decided on these terms and what do they mean for geopolitics? How have directions like east and west taken on the status of cultural identities--or more accurately stereotypes?

Yet today, because of GPS capability, cardinal points are less relevant. Online, we place ourselves at the center of the map as little blue dots moving across geospatial apps; we have become the most important compass point, though in the process we've disconnected ourselves from the natural world. Imagining what future changes technology may impose, Jerry Brotton skillfully reminds us how crucial the four cardinal directions have been to everyone who has ever walked our planet. For anyone interested in history, geography, or surprising new ways to think about the world at large, Four Points of the Compass will be a stimulating experience.

• The Myth of the Continents and why they don't add up
• The Myth of the Border and why walls like Trump's don't work.
• The Myth of the Nation and fuzzy boundaries.
• The Myth of Sovereignty and Taking Back Control
• The Myth of Economic Growth and Why It's Not Worth Dying for
• The Myth of Russia's inevitable expansionism
• The Myth of China's New Silk Road
• The Myth of a doomed Africa

The remarkable (and occasionally ridiculous) stories of 48 nations that fell off the map.

Countries are just daft stories we tell each other. They're all equally implausible once you get up close.

Countries die. Sometimes it's murder, sometimes it's by accident, and sometimes it's because they were so ludicrous they didn't deserve to exist in the first place. This is an atlas of 48 nations that fell off the map. Their causes of death range from the implausible (jerky prices) to the unfortunate (too evil) to the downright bizarre (the flip of a coin). The polite way of writing an obituary is: dwell on the good bits, gloss over the embarrassing stuff. This book refuses to do so, because these dead nations are so ridiculous that it's impossible to skip the embarrassing stuff.

★ This book is a sparkling gem.--Booklist (Starred Review)

Perfect for fans of Atlas Obscura.--Publishers Weekly

We are a species in motion--from the first steps of Homo sapiens across Africa to America's melting pot. And when we move--in search of better things, or against our will--our beliefs and skills clash and combine, reshaping society time and again.

In this visionary Shortest History of Migration, Ian Goldin uncovers key moments of cultural exchange while carefully examining empire, slavery, and war. Throughout, we meet famous explorers (Zheng He), exiles (Pablo Neruda), and everyday people in extraordinary circumstances: a Jewish man saved by the Kindertransport, a Japanese gardener who blossomed in Mexico City.

Today, freedom of movement is being curtailed, even as climate change and conflict mobilize people everywhere around the world. Goldin reminds us that passports at every border are a modern invention (he traces the birth of big brother to World War I), revealing the folly of trying to halt migration--and proposing commonsense policy instead.

A gripping chronicle of want and wanderlust, this is a moving portrait of humanity--in every sense of the word.

The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read.

Turn the pages of this thought-provoking book, and discover maps that challenge conventional wisdom, confront social and political norms and offer fresh perspectives on familiar landscapes.

This meticulously curated selection of 40 maps spans the ages, from ancient parchment scrolls to cutting-edge digital creations. Each map is a window into a different facet of our world, shedding light on the complex interplay of geography, geopolitics, art, history, science, and society.

Maps have always held the power to transport us, not just from one place to another, but from one state of mind to another. Beyond their utilitarian function, maps have an extraordinary ability to tell stories, reveal truths, and inspire revolutions.

They are not mere drawings of geographic boundaries, but gateways to the collective wisdom of humanity. You'll encounter maps that dissect the intricate tapestry of human migration, maps that unveil the secrets of the cosmos and maps, that expose the stark realities of our changing climate. These maps are not just illustrations; they are provocations, invitations to rethink the world.

40 Maps That Will Change How You See the World is not just a book for geographers or history buffs; it is a profound exploration for anyone with a curious mind. Whether you're an armchair traveler, a seasoned explorer, a student of geopolitics, or an art aficionado, this book will challenge your preconceptions, spark lively discussions, and deepen your appreciation for the interconnectedness of our world.

Palestine 1492 is a report back of what I see from 500 years of the struggle for life in words, maps, and images in the seven cardinal directions and in the spiral that is time.

In Maya geography, there is east, west, south, and north, and there is also earth and sky. In the middle there is you, a meeting place between the physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental that together make up the social, a meeting place between earth and sky.

East, the physical, begins this report back by orienting us in a corner of Mother Earth still holding a stubborn insistence on life: Palestine.

West, the spiritual, helps diagnose an illness of a wounded, imbalanced, and dangerous world imposed globally since 1492.

In the South, the emotional, Chiapas nourishes our courage from below in a time of World Wars and global rebellions.

In the North, the mental, we flip the world on its head but not to remain, to help plan our common escape.

Throughout, I share conclusions Palestinians, Zapatistas, Panthers, and jaguars have taught me along this journey: that this world itself is unethical, and that changing it is difficult, even impossible. If after reading you also believe this to be true, may we dismantle this world together and help build a new one from below and in common, together and side by side.

Often overshadowed by San Francisco, its larger and more glamorous twin, Oakland has a fascinating history of its own. From serving as a major transportation hub to forging a dynamic manufacturing sector, by the mid-twentieth century Oakland had become the urban center of the East Bay. Hella Town focuses on how political deals, economic schemes, and technological innovations fueled this emergence but also seeded the city's postwar struggles.

Toward the turn of the millennium, as immigration from Latin America and East Asia increased, Oakland became one of the most diverse cities in the country. The city still grapples with the consequences of uneven class- and race-based development-amid-disruption. How do past decisions about where to locate highways or public transit, urban renewal districts or civic venues, parks or shopping centers, influence how Oaklanders live today? A history of Oakland's buildings and landscapes, its booms and its busts, provides insight into its current conditions: an influx of new residents and businesses, skyrocketing housing costs, and a lingering chasm between the haves and have-nots.

A Penguin Classic

In 1518, al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan, a Moroccan diplomat, was seized by pirates while travelling in the Mediterranean. Brought before Pope Leo X, he was persuaded to convert to Christianity, in the process taking the name Johannes Leo Africanus. Acclaimed in the papal court for his learning, Leo would in time write his masterpiece, The Cosmography and the Geography of Africa. The Cosmography was the first book about Africa, and the first book written by a modern African, to reach print. It would remain central to the European understanding of Africa for over 300 years, with its descriptions of lands, cities, and peoples giving a singular vision of the vast continent: its urban bustle and rural expanse, its culture, commerce and warfare, its magical herbs and strange animals. Yet it is not a mere catalogue: Leo also invited his readers to acknowledge the similarity and relevance of these lands to the time and place they knew. For this reason, The Cosmography and Geography of Africa remains significant to our understanding not only of Africa, but of the world and how we perceive it.

Landmark Maps of Texas features important depictions of the Lone Star State and the Americas from 1513 to 1904. 100 maps in their old color grace its pages and many of these specimens are extraordinary and rare. This is not just a picture book designed to sit on a coffee table but rather a book to be read and referenced. Landmark Maps of Texas features the story behind the original map and its owner and how Frank Holcomb brought this treasure to Texas. Provenance takes center stage and there is an emphasis on items from 1830-1850 when Texas became a Republic and later joined the United States. Another section in this book takes readers on a chronological trek that shows how our understanding of the lay of the land evolved over time. This is more than geography. This is history and the geographical canvas that it is painted upon.

If you live in Texas, have been to Texas, or might come to Texas, Landmark Maps of Texas brings the finest assembly of Lone Star State charts to the reading public.

A Child's Geography of the World is a general course in geography for juveniles. Hillyer was headmaster at the famed Calvert School and wrote a series of books as part of the curriculum for his students. This title was the result of many years of teaching the subject to young children and of several more years in authoring it. The books is now considered in a classic in home schooling.

illustrated with maps and drawings.

Roald Amundsen was a Norwegian explorer whose team were the first to reach the South Pole - this is his astonishing story, in his own words.

Amundsen begins by explaining that he was not born with an urge to explorer the farthest, uncharted regions of the world. At fifteen he received as a gift the memoirs of Sir John Franklin, a famous British explorer, which roused an immediate interest. This was increased further by Amundsen's compulsory military service, part of which consisted of roaming the rugged, snowy outdoors. Almost immediately after the end of his time in the army, further explorations deep in the Arctic circle beckoned.

At twenty-five, Amundsen was accepted into the Belgian Antarctic Expedition - an event he considers very lucky. For it was here that he gained his first experiences of the Antarctic climate, and began to contemplate organizing a team to reach the South Pole. It was an epic journey; Amundsen's team, equipped with sleds run by dogs and clad in thick furs, famously became the first people ever to set foot on the South Pole.

Later in the book, Amundsen explains his efforts to chart the Northwest Passage in the remotest wildernesses of Canada. To this end, he made use of aircraft in the early 1920s. However, owing to the economic turmoil after World War One he found it difficult to finance his expeditions. Nevertheless, his spirit remained undaunted - indeed, the tenacity that got Roald Amundsen so far shines in these pages.

One of the Top Urban Planning Books of 2022, Planetizen

The full and fascinating guidebook that Orange County deserves.

A People's Guide to Orange County is an alternative tour guide that documents sites of oppression, resistance, struggle, and transformation in Orange County, California. Orange County is more than the well-known images on orange crate labels, the high-profile amusement parks of Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm, or the beaches. It is also a unique site of agricultural and suburban history, political conservatism in a liberal state, and more diversity and discordance than its pop-cultural images show. It is a space of important agricultural labor disputes, segregation and resistance to segregation, privatization and the struggle for public space, politicized religions, Cold War global migrations, vibrant youth cultures, and efforts for environmental justice. Memorably, Ronald Reagan called Orange County the place where all the good Republicans go to die, but it is also the place where many working-class immigrants have come to live and work in its agricultural, military-industrial, and tourist service economies.

Orange County is the fifth-most populous county in America. If it were a city, it would be the nation's third-largest city; if it were a state, its population would make it larger than twenty-one other states. It attracts 42 million tourists annually. Yet Orange County tends to be a chapter or two squeezed into guidebooks to Los Angeles or Disneyland. Mainstream guidebooks focus on Orange County's amusement parks and wealthy coastal communities, with side trips to palatial shopping malls. These guides skip over Orange County's most heterogeneous half--the inland space, where most of its oranges were grown alongside oil derricks that kept the orange groves heated. Existing guidebooks render invisible the diverse people who have labored there. A People's Guide to Orange County questions who gets to claim Orange County's image, exposing the extraordinary stories embedded in the ordinary landscape.

Combining history, reportage and personal narrative, Inventing Niagara traces Niagara's journey from sublime icon to engineering marvel to camp spectacle. Along the way, Ginger Strand uncovers the hidden history of America's waterfall: the Mohawk chief who wrested the Falls from his adopted tribe, the revered town father who secretly assisted slave catchers, the wartime workers who unknowingly helped build the Bomb and the building contractor who bought and sold a pharaoh. With an uncanny ability to zero in on the buried truth, Strand introduces us to underwater dams, freaks of nature, mythical maidens and 280,000 radioactive mice buried at Niagara.

From LaSalle to Lincoln to Los Alamos, Mohawks to Marilyn, Niagara's story is America's story, a tale of dreams founded on the mastery of nature. At a time of increasing environmental crisis, Inventing Niagara shows us how understanding the cultural history of nature might help us rethink our place in it today.

An alternative history and geography of the Bay Area that highlights sites of oppression, resistance, and transformation.

Lavishly produced, with beautiful images and crystal clear prose, A People's Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area is for readers and activists who have taken part in protests and demonstrations for decades, and from Berkeley and Oakland to San Francisco, Sonoma and beyond.--CounterPunch

A People's Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area looks beyond the mythologized image of San Francisco to the places where collective struggle has built the region. Countering romanticized commercial narratives about the Bay Area, geographers Rachel Brahinsky and Alexander Tarr highlight the cultural and economic landscape of indigenous resistance to colonial rule, radical interracial and cross-class organizing against housing discrimination and police violence, young people demanding economically and ecologically sustainable futures, and the often-unrecognized labor of farmworkers and everyday people.

The book asks who had--and who has--the power to shape the geography of one of the most watched regions in the world. As Silicon Valley's wealth dramatically transforms the look and feel of every corner of the region, like bankers' wealth did in the past, what do we need to remember about the people and places that have made the Bay Area, with its rich political legacies?

A useful companion for travelers, educators, or longtime residents, this guide:

• Features over 100 must-visit sites to explore and learn from.
• Demonstrates how to read the landscape for historical clues.
• Connects multicultural streets, lush hills, suburban cul-de-sacs, and wetlands across the Bay Area.
• Covers a wide range of locations, from the North Bay to the South Bay, East Bay, and San Francisco.
• Includes original maps to guide readers through the region.
• Offers thematic tours--such as The Intertribal Bay and The Youth in Revolt tours--as starting points for creating personalized routes.

A lively new translation of Strabo's complete Geography--an encyclopedic guide to the ancient world of the first century CE--connecting it with the world of the twenty-first century

Strabo's Geography is an encyclopedic description of the ancient world as it appeared to a contemporary observer in the early Roman empire. Information about taming elephants, collecting saffron, producing asphalt, and practicing yoga is found alongside accounts of prostitution, volcanic activity, religious festivals, and obscure eastern dynasties--all set against the shifting backdrop of political power in the first century CE. Traveling around the Mediterranean, Strabo gathered knowledge of places and people, supplementing his firsthand experiences with an immense amount of reading to create a sweeping chronicle that attempts to answer the implicit questions Who are we? and Where do we come from? Sarah Pothecary's new translation of Strabo's complete Geography makes this important work more accessible, relevant, and enjoyable than ever before.

Conveying the informal, lively, and almost journalistic style of Strabo's Greek, this translation connects the ancient and modern worlds by providing modern names and maps for places mentioned in the text, a generous page layout, and marginal notes, allowing readers to appreciate Strabo's work directly and immediately. The result mimics what Strabo was doing two thousand years ago--relating the rapidly changing present of his original readers to their own ancient past.

A remarkably modern translation of a revealing window on the ancient world, this is essential reading for anyone interested in how we look at both antiquity and the world today.

The Primary Chronicle of Kyivan Rus' was authored by the early Christian monks of the Caves Monastery, and other monasteries, in today's capital city of Ukraine, Kyiv. It has been known by many different names including, The Tale of Bygone Years, Chronicle of Nestor, as well as other names.

The Chronicle covers many centuries and was added to by many different monks. It tells about the founding of Kyiv and the origins of the Ukrainian people. This translation is based on the original Laurentian and Hypatian texts and is intended for the general reader who is interested in learning about the early history of Eastern Europe, in particular Ukraine.

This modern English translation of the Chronicles of Kyivan Rus' will give the general reader and the student of Eastern Europe a good understanding of the times in which the two East European countries of Ukraine and Belarus and the Eurasian country of Russia were formed. It was a time of great change and major social upheaval, political, religious and cultural.

This new translation of the history of Kyiv will give clarity to some of the misconceptions that are still prevalent in many political and academic circles around the world about Ukraine and Ukrainians.

Dan Korolyshyn, born in Austria during the War, came to the States in 1947. Attended Public School in NYC on Manhattan's Lower Eastside. After school he went to Ukrainian school and studied Ukrainian history and culture. Later attended Ukrainian cultural courses at the Ukrainian resort, Soyuzivka, in upstate New York, continuing to study Ukrainian history. He took an upper level undergraduate history course on Kyivan Rus' at the University of Washington as a post graduate. Was a founding member of the Tidewater Ukrainian Cultural Association in Virginia and continues to study history and be involved in Ukrainian and Christian activities.

Richmond and Central Virginia are a historic epicenter of America's racialized history. This alternative guidebook foregrounds diverse communities in the region who are mobilizing to dismantle oppressive systems and fundamentally transforming the space to live and thrive. Featuring personal reflections from activists, artists, and community leaders, this book eschews colonial monuments and confederate memorials to instead highlight movements, neighborhoods, landmarks, and gathering spaces that shape social justice struggles across the history of this rapidly growing area.

The sites, stories, and events featured here reveal how community resistance and resilience remain firmly embedded in the region's landscape. A People's Guide to Richmond and Central Virginia counters the narrative that elites make history worth knowing, and sites worth visiting, by demonstrating how ordinary people come together to create more equitable futures.

A Child's Geography of the World is a general course in geography for juveniles. Hillyer was headmaster at the famed Calvert School and wrote a series of books as part of the curriculum for his students. This title was the result of many years of teaching the subject to young children and of several more years in authoring it. The books is now considered in a classic in home schooling.

illustrated with maps and drawings.