Good Old Maps

Good news for anyone who enjoys flipping through or zooming in on freaky medieval maps (everyone, right?):

Three of my great fascinations — cartography as art, propaganda design, and antique maps — converge in Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art. The lavish tome collects cartographic curiosities from the golden age of display maps — the period between 1450 and 1800, when maps were as much a practical tool for navigation as they were works of art and affirmations of cultural hegemony or social status — culled from the formidable collection of the British Library.

That’s Brain Picking’s wonderful Maria Popova, who today features several excerpts from the map collection (it’s $24.95), and then here’s the zoomable website, where I now live. Magnificent.