ABC Books, Australia, 2005. Good secondhand copy.

A painstaking selection of the most important, dramatic and sometimes breathtakingly beautiful maps. Cartography is both a science and an art; as such, it provides marvellous waypoints for changes in different cultures through history. But it can also be a weapon, or at least a potentially destructive undertaking. Some of the maps in this book had devastating consequences, such as the 1885 map of Africa that carved up the continent among the European colonial powers. Other maps are simply beautiful, such as the painting Dreamtime map of the Australian Aborigines. While approachable as a series of amazing short stories, the maps are organised to explain the development of cartography and illuminate the historical, scientific, and sometimes political background.