Historical atlases offer an understanding of the past that is invaluable to historians, not only because they convey a previous age's sense of space and distance but also because they reveal what historians and educators thought important to include or omit. This book - the first comprehensive and wide-ranging account of the historical atlas - explores the role, development and nature of this important reference tool and discusses its impact on the presentation of the past. 'This book is more than an excellent guide to the subject: it also provides a vast quarry of information on how visions of the world and the past have been warped by political and cultural prejudices ...A veritable encyclopaedia of the subject, in which every contributor to the tradition gets a mention and every technical advance is recorded.' Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Literary Review 'Remarkably, this is the first survey in English of how people in Europe and America depicted the space in which they lived from Abraham Ortelius's historical atlas of 1570 to the latest moment.' Jonathan Clark, The Spectator Jeremy Black is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. He is the author of many books on British and European history.