Experience the sweep of human and natural history on the Columbia Plateau through the eyes of intrepid explorer and cartographer David Thompson, who established two viable trade routes across the Rocky Mountains in Canada, systematically surveyed the entire 1,250-mile course of the Columbia River, and subsequently distilled his mathematical notations into the first accurate maps of a vast portion of the northwest quadrant of North America.

An eminent historian of cartography offers this Iavishly illustrated account of the mapmaking revolution in Renaissance Europe. 78 halftones. 12 color plates.

From the critically acclaimed author of The Mercy of Thin Air comes the profound story of a strong, resilient woman who risks everything to be true to herself, “an otherworldly tale that charts the all-too-human territory between heartbreak and hope” (Deborah Harkness, New York Times bestselling author of A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night). In an ancient time, in a faraway land, a young woman named Aoife is allowed a rare apprenticeship to become her kingdom’s mapmaker, tasked with charting the entire domain. Traveling beyond its borders, she finds a secretive people who live in peace, among great wealth. They claim to protect a mythic treasure, one connected to the creation of the world. When Aoife reports their existence to her kingdom, the community is targeted as a threat. Aoife is exiled for treason and finds refuge among the very people who had been declared her enemy. With them, she begins a new life surrounded by kindness, equality, and cooperation. But within herself, Aoife has no peace. She cannot share the grief she feels for the home and children she left behind, nor can she bear the warrior scars of the man she comes to love. And when she gives birth to their gifted daughter, Aoife cannot avoid what the child forces her to confront about her past and its truth. On this most important of journeys, there is no map to guide her.

In his classic text, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner John Noble Wilford recounts the history of cartography from antiquity to the space age. They are among the world's great pioneers and adventurers: the mapmakers who for centuries have been expanding our knowledge of who and where we are, and where we want to go. From the surprisingly accurate silk maps prepared by Chinese cartographers in the second century B.C., to medieval mapmakers who believed they had fixed the location of paradise, through to the expeditions of Columbus and Magellan, John Noble Wilford chronicles the exploits of the great pioneers of mapmaking. Wilford brings the story up to the present day as he shows the impact of new technologies that make 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. These modern-day mapmakers join the many earlier adventurers—including ancient Greek stargazers, Renaissance seafarers, and the explorers who mapped the American West—whose achievements shape this dramatic story of human inventiveness and limitless curiosity.

Popular historian D’Arcy Jenish recreates the adventure and sacrifice of mapmaker David Thompson’s fascinating life in the wilderness of North America. Epic Wanderer, the first full-length biography of David Thompson, is set in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries against a broad canvas of dramatic rivalries—between the United States and British North America, between the Hudson’s Bay Company and its Montreal-based rival, the North West Co., and between the various First Nations thrown into disarray by the advent of guns, horses and alcohol. Less celebrated than his contemporaries Lewis and Clark, Thompson spent nearly three decades (1784–1812) surveying and mapping over 1.2 million square miles of largely uncharted Indian territory. Travelling across the prairies, over the Rockies and on to the Pacific, Thompson transformed the raw data of his explorations into a map of the Canadian West. Measuring ten feet by seven feet, and laid out with astonishing accuracy, the map became essential to the politicians and diplomats who would decide upon the future of the rich and promising lands of the West. Yet its creator worked without personal glory and died in penniless obscurity. Drawing extensively on David Thompson’s personal journals, illustrated with his detailed sketches, intricate notebook pages and the map itself, Epic Wanderer charts the life of a man who risked everything in the name of scientific advancement and exploration.

Return to Cordelia Hatmaker’s spellbinding world of magic and millinery in this sparkling sequel to The Hatmakers. Cordelia Hatmaker has saved England from war. She stopped Lord Whitloof’s sinister plans, rescued the King and Princess, and restored the Makers Guild. But she still hasn’t found her missing father. Ever since Cordelia discovered the hidden map in her father’s telescope, she’s been searching the streets of London by starlight, trying to uncover its secrets. She never expects to stumble upon a secret society of Mapmakers—or to learn that magic isn’t limited to the few Maker families, but instead is all around, if you know where to look. But danger is lurking around every corner, and Cordelia must convince the rival Maker families to work together for once—not only to bring her father home, but to save the very essence of magic itself. . . . With exceptional and inventive storytelling and a lionhearted heroine, Tamzin Merchant once again draws readers into her captivating London and takes them on a breathless new adventure full of wildness, wit, warmth—and magic.

"Author Jack Nisbet utilizes fresh research to convey how Thompson experienced the full sweep of the human and natural history etched across the Columbia drainage. He places Thompson's movements within the larger contexts of the European Enlightenment, the British fur trade economy, and American expansion as represented by Lewis and Clark. Packed with illustrations, photographs, and maps, The Mapmaker's Eye is a chronicle of Thompson's life and adventures, especially in the Columbia country."--Jacket.