The Mapmaker's Quest: Depicting New Worlds in Renaissance Europe

In 1400 Europe lagged far behind much of the world in its understanding of the use of maps. And yet, by 1600 the Europeans had come to use maps for a huge variety of tasks, and were far ahead of the rest of the world in their appreciation of the power and use of cartography. The Mapmakers' Quest illuminates the forces behind this development--not only to tease out the strands of thought and practice which led to the use of maps, but also to assess the ways in which such use affected European societies and economies.