Jerry Brotton

Un recorrido por la historia a partir de doce mapas fundamentales.Desde la Antigüedad, los mapas han sido fundamentales a la hora de conformar nuestra visión del mundo y nuestro lugar en él. Pero lej

Throughout history, maps have been fundamental in shaping our view of the world, and our place in it. But far from being purely scientific objects, maps of the world are unavoidably ideological and subjective, intimately bound up with the systems of power and authority of particular times and places. Mapmakers do not simply represent the world, they construct it out of the ideas of their age. In this scintillating book, Jerry Brotton examines the significance of 12 maps - from the almost mystical representations of ancient history to the satellite-derived imagery of today. He vividly recreates the environments and circumstances in which each of the maps was made, showing how each conveys a highly individual view of the world. Brotton shows how each of his maps both influenced and reflected contemporary events and how, by reading it, we can better understand the worlds that produced it. Although the way we map our surroundings is changing, Brotton argues that maps today are no more definitive or objective than they have ever been, but that they continue to define, shape and recreate the world. Readers of this book will never look at a map in quite the same way again.

A sparkling exploration of direction by the acclaimed author of A History of the World in 12 Maps North south east and west almost all societies use the four cardinal directions to orientate themselves 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 various a sometimes contradictory a than we might realize The Four Points of the Compass takes the reader on a journey of directional discovery Jerry Brotton reveals why Hebrew culture privileges east why Renaissance Europeans began drawing north at the top of their maps why the early Islam revered the south why the Aztecs used five colour coded cardinal directions and why no societies primitive or modern have ever orientated themselves westwards He ends by reflecting on our digital age in which we the little blue dot on the screen have become the most important compass point Throughout Brotton shows that the directions reflect a human desire to create order and that they only have meaning literally and metaphorically depending on where you stand

El Renacimiento fue uno de los momentos culminantes de la historia universal. En esa época Oriente y Occidente empezaron a darse cuenta de sus semejanzas, tanto en el ámbito político como en el cultural. En este amplio estudio, Jerry Brottons sostiene que entre 1400 y 1600 Europa se definio a si misma gracias al comercio y a la competencia con sus vecinos islamicos, africanos y asiaticos. La obra nos cuenta la historia de este intenso intercambio de ideas, objetos y tecnicas que configuraron el Renacimiento europeo. Tambien nos muestra la estrecha vinculacion existente entre los progresos tecnologicos y comerciales -como la imprenta, la banca o los avances cartograficos- y las grandes obras del arte, la literatura, la ciencia y los descubrimientos que caracterizaron este periodo. Este apasionante e innovador enfoque nos describe el Renacimiento como un fenomeno global cuyo influjo se hizo sentir en Oriente, Africa y las Americas, aunque a su vez nos dejo un triste legado de esclavitud, colonizacion e intolerancia religiosa cuya huella aun pervive en el mundo contemporaneo. Se trata, en suma, de un texto actual y polemico que desmitifica la idea segun la cual el Renacimiento es la epoca en la que se fraguo la superioridad de la cultura occidental.

Un recorrido por la historia a partir de doce mapas fundamentales. Desde la Antigüedad, los mapas han sido fundamentales a la hora de conformar nuestra visión del mundo y nuestro lugar en él. Pero le