A map is a snapshot of a place, a city, a nation or even the world at a given point in time - fascinating for what they tell us about the way our ancestors saw themselves, their neighbours and their place in the world. This magnificent collection, drawn from seven centuries of maps held in the National Archives at Kew, looks at a variety of maps, from those found in 14th Century manuscripts, through early estate maps, to sea charts, maps used in military campaigns, and maps from treaties. The text explores who the mapmakers were, the purposes for which the maps were made, and what it tells us about the politics of the time. Great images are accompanied by compelling stories. Featured is a woodcut map of 16th Century London, a map of where the bombs fell during the Second World War, and a map the first American settlers' drew when they were attempting to establish a new empire on Roanoke Island, off the coast of what is now North Carolina. Richly illustrated with large scale reproductions of the maps, the book also includes some of the more amusing or esoteric maps from the National Archives, such as the map of the Great Exhibition in 1851 that was presented on a lady's glove, a London Underground map in the form of a cucumber, and a Treasure Island map used to advertise National Savings. This is a fascinating and unusual journey through the world of maps and mapmakers.

In 1967 Israel occupied the western section of Syria's Golan Heights, expelling 130,000 residents and leaving only a few thousand Arab inhabitants clustered in several villages. Sometimes characterised as the 'forgotten occupation', the western Golan Heights have been transformed by Israeli colonisation, including the appropriation of land and water resources, economic development and extensive military use. This landmark volume is the first academic study in English of Arab politics and culture in the occupied Golan Heights. It focuses on an indigenous community, known as the Jawlanis, and their experience of everyday colonisation and resistance to settler colonisation. Chapters cover how governance is carried out in the Golan, from Israel's use of the education system and collective memory, to its development of large-scale wind turbines which are now a symbol of Israeli encroachment. To illustrate the ways in which the current regime of Israeli rule has been contested, there are chapters on the six-month strike of 1982, youth mobilisation in the occupied Golan, Palestinian solidarity movements, and the creation of Jawlani art and writing as an act of resistance. Rich in ethnographic detail and with chapters from diverse disciplines, the book is unique in bringing together Jawlani, Palestinian and UK researchers. The innovative format - with shorter 'reflections' from young Arab researchers, activists and lawyers that respond to more traditional academic chapters - establishes a bold new 'de-colonial' approach.

Nonstop Metropolis,Êthe culminating volume in a trilogy of atlases, conveys innumerable unbound experiences of New York City through twenty-six imaginative maps and informative essays. Bringing together the insights of dozens of expertsÑfrom linguists to music historians, ethnographers, urbanists, and environmental journalistsÑamplified by cartographers, artists, and photographers, it explores all five boroughs of New York City and parts of nearby New Jersey. We are invited to travel through ManhattanÕs playgrounds, from polyglot Queens to many-faceted Brooklyn, and from the resilient Bronx to the mystical kung fu hip-hop mecca of Staten Island. The contributors to this exquisitely designed and gorgeously illustrated volume celebrate New York CityÕs unique vitality, its incubation of the avant-garde, and its literary history, but they also critique its racial and economic inequality, environmental impact, and erasure of its past.ÊNonstop MetropolisÊallows us to excavate New YorkÕs buried layers, to scrutinize its political heft, and to discover the unexpected in one of the most iconic cities in the world. It is both a challenge and homage to how New Yorkers think of their city, and how the world sees this capital of capitalism, culture, immigration, and more. Contributors:ÊSheerly Avni,ÊGaiutra Bahadur,ÊMarshall Berman,ÊJoe Boyd,ÊWill Butler,ÊGarnette Cadogan,ÊThomas J. Campanella,ÊDaniel Aldana Cohen,ÊTeju Cole,ÊJoel Dinerstein,ÊPaul La Farge,ÊFrancisco Goldman,ÊMargo Jefferson,ÊLucy R. Lippard,ÊBarry Lopez,ÊValeria Luiselli,ÊSuketu Mehta,ÊEmily Raboteau, Molly Roy, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts,ÊLuc Sante,ÊHeather Smith,ÊJonathan Tarleton,ÊAstra Taylor,ÊAlexandra T. Vazquez,ÊChristina Zanfagna Interviews with:ÊValerie Capers, Peter Coyote, Grandmaster Caz,ÊGrand Wizzard Theodore,ÊMelle Mel, RZA

If you want to know where you are, you need a good clock. The surprising connection between time and placeais explored inaTime and Navigation- The Untold Story of Getting from Here to There, the companion book to the National Air and Space Museum exhibition of the same name. Today we use smartphones and GPS, but navigating has not always been so easy. The oldest "clock" is Earth itself, and the oldest means of keeping time came from observing changes in the sky. Early mariners like the Vikings accomplished amazing feats of navigation without using clocks at all. Pioneering seafarers in the Age of Exploration used dead reckoning and celestial navigation; later innovations such as sextants and marine chronometers honed these techniques by measuring latitude and longitude. When explorers turned their sights to the skies, they built on what had been learned at sea. For example, Charles Lindbergh used a bubble sextant on his record-breaking flights. World War II led to the development of new flight technologies, notably radio navigation, since celestial navigation was not suited for all-weather military operations. These forms of navigation were extended and enhanced when explorers began guiding spacecraft into space and across the solar system. Astronauts combined celestial navigation technology with radio transmissions. The development of the atomic clock revolutionized space flight because it could measure billionths of a second, thereby allowing mission teams to navigate more accurately. Scientists and engineers applied these technologies to navigation on earth to develop space-based time and navigation services such as GPS that is used every day by people from all walks of life. While the history of navigation is one of constant change and innovation, it is also one of remarkable continuity. Time and Navigation tells the story of navigation to help us understand where we have been and how we got there so that we can understand where we are going.

“Clever, creepy, elaborate world building and snarky, sexy-smart characters!”—N. K. Jemisin, author of The Fifth Season In this thrilling historical fantasy, time-traveling Librarian spy Irene will need to delve deep into a tangled web of loyalty and power to keep her friends safe. Irene is trying to learn the truth about Alberich-and the possibility that he's her father. But when the Library orders her to kill him, and then Alberich himself offers to sign a truce, she has to discover why he originally betrayed the Library. With her allies endangered and her strongest loyalties under threat, she'll have to trace his past across multiple worlds and into the depths of mythology and folklore, to find the truth at the heart of the Library, and why the Library was first created.

The story of an infamous crime, a revered map dealer with an unsavory secret, and the ruthless subculture that consumed him Maps have long exerted a special fascination on viewers—both as beautiful works of art and as practical tools to navigate the world. But to those who collect them, the map trade can be a cutthroat business, inhabited by quirky and sometimes disreputable characters in search of a finite number of extremely rare objects. Once considered a respectable antiquarian map dealer, E. Forbes Smiley spent years doubling as a map thief —until he was finally arrested slipping maps out of books in the Yale University library. The Map Thief delves into the untold history of this fascinating high-stakes criminal and the inside story of the industry that consumed him. Acclaimed reporter Michael Blanding has interviewed all the key players in this stranger-than-fiction story, and shares the fascinating histories of maps that charted the New World, and how they went from being practical instruments to quirky heirlooms to highly coveted objects. Though pieces of the map theft story have been written before, Blanding is the first reporter to explore the story in full—and had the rare privilege of having access to Smiley himself after he’d gone silent in the wake of his crimes. Moreover, although Smiley swears he has admitted to all of the maps he stole, libraries claim he stole hundreds more—and offer intriguing clues to prove it. Now, through a series of exclusive interviews with Smiley and other key individuals, Blanding teases out an astonishing tale of destruction and redemption. The Map Thief interweaves Smiley’s escapades with the stories of the explorers and mapmakers he knew better than anyone. Tracking a series of thefts as brazen as the art heists in Provenance and a subculture as obsessive as the oenophiles in The Billionaire’s Vinegar, Blanding has pieced together an unforgettable story of high-stakes crime.

This “absorbing history of the Ordnance Survey”—the first complete map of the British Isles—"charts the many hurdles map-makers have had to overcome” (The Guardian, UK). Map of a Nation tells the story of the creation of the Ordnance Survey map, the first complete, accurate, affordable map of the British Isles. The Ordnance Survey is a much beloved British institution, and this is—amazingly—the first popular history to tell the story of the map and the men who dreamt and delivered it. The Ordnance Survey’s history is one of political revolutions, rebellions and regional unions that altered the shape and identity of the United Kingdom over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It’s also a deliciously readable account of one of the great untold British adventure stories, featuring intrepid individuals lugging brass theodolites up mountains to make the country visible to itself for the first time.