Discover the history of the United Kingdom through maps

From Mappa Mundi to modern election maps, the United Kingdom has evolved rapidly, along with the ways in which it has been mapped. In this time, cartography has not only kept pace with these changes, but has often driven them. In this beautiful book, more than 90 maps give a visual representation of the history of Britain.

Every map tells a story and this book tells the incredible history of Britain through maps, and includes many famous examples of cartography, along with some that deserve to be better known. See the establishment of Great Britain, the British Empire expand, the impact of World Wars and the latest statistical mapping.

Maps include
• Rudge Cup (schematic map of western forts on Hadrian’s Wall), 2nd century AD
• Matthew Paris map of the Anglian Heptarchy (Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms), c. 1250
• Gough map of Britain, 1360
• Cambriae Typus, first published map of Wales, 1573
• Raven maps of the Ulster Plantations, 1622
• Enclosure map (eg of Norfolk, c. 1800)
• Booth Poverty Map of London, 1886
• Map of Beeching cuts to Britain’s railways, 1963
• Map of EU Referendum voting patterns, 2016

Read more

THE TIMES BEST HISTORY BOOK OF 2023
A BOOK OF THE YEAR PICK FOR THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE AND FINANCIAL TIMES
A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK | AN INSTANT #2 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
‘Humanity has transformed the Earth: Frankopan transforms our understanding of history’ Financial Times
‘Vast, learned and timely work’ Sunday Times
——
From the international bestselling author of The Silk Roads comes a major history of how a changing climate has dramatically shaped the development-and demise-of civilisations across time.

When we think about history, we rarely pay much attention to the most destructive floods, the worst winters, the most devastating droughts or the ways that ecosystems have changed over time.

In The Earth Transformed, Peter Frankopan, one of the world’s leading historians, shows that the natural environment is a crucial, if not the defining, factor in global history – and not just of humankind. Volcanic eruptions, solar activities, atmospheric, oceanic and other shifts, as well as anthropogenic behaviour, are fundamental parts of the past and the present. In this magnificent and groundbreaking book, we learn about the origins of our species: about the development of religion and language and their relationships with the environment; about how the desire to centralise agricultural surplus formed the origins of the bureaucratic state; about how growing demands for harvests resulted in the increased shipment of enslaved peoples; about how efforts to understand and manipulate the weather have a long and deep history. All provide lessons of profound importance as we face a precarious future of rapid global warming.

Taking us from the Big Bang to the present day and beyond, The Earth Transformed forces us to reckon with humankind’s continuing efforts to make sense of the natural world.
—–
‘This is epic, gripping, original history that leaps off the page’ Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireland
‘All Historians aiming to tell a narrative face the problem of when exactly to start it. Only Peter Frankopan would go back 2.5 billion years to the Great Oxidation Event’ Tom Holland

A 2023 HIGHLIGHT FOR: BBC NEWS * SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE * FINANCIAL TIMES * NEW EUROPEAN * GUARDIAN * NEW STATESMAN * THE TIMES * THE WEEK * WATERSTONES * BLACKWELL’S

Read more

Clevelanders–Give this book to those new neighbors who just moved to town, your adult kids (who you want to stick around), or yourself for a fun and informative read!

Whether you’re new to Cleveland or have lived here for decades, you’ve probably wondered (as so many of us do) …

• Why Do Clevelanders Wear So Many Cleveland T-shirts?
• Do We Really Need All These Suburbs?
• How Can People Still Love the Browns Despite Decades of Crummy Football?
• Who Is That Building Named After?
• Why Are There So Many Different Bridges Over the Cuyahoga?
• Why Is an Airport Taking Up All that Prime Downtown Lakefront?
• How Did Cleveland Become a National Punchline?
• Why Doesn’t CSU Have a Football Team?
• Why Is It Called Whiskey Island?
• Why Is Cleveland Still So Segregated?
• Why Do So Many Cleveland Suburbs Have “Heights” in Their Name?

Answers to these and dozens of other frequently asked questions are delivered in this collection of thoughtful and entertaining short essays by Cleveland native and veteran journalist Jim Sweeney.

Read more

‘Agile, wryly funny and wise.’ Robert Macfarlane

A search for nearby nature and wildness.

After years of expeditions all over the world, adventurer Alastair Humphreys spends a year exploring the small map around his own home.

Can this unassuming landscape marked by the glow of city lights and hum of busy roads hold any surprises for the world traveller or slake his wanderlust? Could a single map provide a lifetime of exploration?

Discovering more about nature and wildness than in all his years in remote environments, he learns the value of truly getting to know his neighbourhood.

An ode to slowing down, Local is a celebration of curiosity and time outdoors, as well as a rallying cry to protect the wild places on our doorstep.

Read more

A Brief History of Thailand offers an engaging look at the country’s last 250 years―from coups and violent massacres to the invention of Pad Thai in the 1930’s. Readers will learn the vibrant story of Thailand’s emergence as a prosperous Buddhist state, its transformation from traditional kingdom to democratic constitutional monarchy and its subsequent rise to prominence in Southeast Asian affairs.

Thailand’s dramatic history spans centuries of conflict, and this book recounts many of these fascinating episodes, including:

• The true story of Anna Leonowens, the British governess hired to teach the children of King Mongkut, fictionalized in Margaret Landon’s bestselling novel Anna and the King of Siam and turned into a hit Rodgers and Hammerstein musical and film, The King and I
• The bloodless Siamese Revolution of 1932 that established overnight the first constitutional monarchy in Asia, ending almost eight centuries of absolute rule and creating a democratic system of parliamentary government
• The Japanese invasion of Thailand and construction of the ‘Bridge Over the River Kwai’ made famous by the novel and Oscar-winning film
• The mysterious death of King Ananda Mahidol, murdered in his bed in 1946, and a source of controversy ever since
• The development of Thailand as an international playground during the Vietnam War, when American military used it as rowdy destination for servicemen on furlough
• The 70-year reign of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world’s longest-serving monarch, who was born in the U.S., educated in Switzerland, loved to play the saxophone and was idolized by his people

With this book, historian and professor Richard A. Ruth has skillfully crafted an accessible cultural and political history of an understudied nation. Covering events through the King’s death in 2016, A Brief History of Thailand will be of interest to students, travelers and anyone hoping to learn more about this part of the world.

Read more