Four Points of the Compass: The Unexpected History of Direction

by Jerry Brotton Narrated by Liam Garrigan

Overview

From the New York Times bestselling author of A History of the World in 12 Maps, this is the revelatory history of the four cardinal directions that have oriented and defined our place on the globe for millennia.

North, south, east, and west: almost all societies use these four cardinal directions to orientate themselves and 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 sometimes contradictory-than we might realize. Four Points of the Compass leads us on a journey of directional discovery. Societies have understood and defined directions in very different ways based on their locations in time and space. Historian Jerry Brotton reveals why Hebrew culture privileges east; why Renaissance Europeans began drawing north at the top of their maps; why early Islam revered the south; why the Aztecs used five color-coded cardinal directions; and why no societies, primitive or modern, have ever orientated themselves westwards. In doing so, politically-loaded but widely used terms such as the “Middle East,” the “Global South,” the “West Indies,” the “Orient,” and even the “western world” take on new meanings. Who decided on these terms and what do they mean for geopolitics? How have directions like “east” and “west” taken on the status of cultural identities-or more accurately stereotypes?

Yet today, because of GPS capability, cardinal points are less relevant. Online, we place ourselves at the center of the map as little blue dots moving across geospatial apps; we have become the most important compass point, though in the process we've disconnected ourselves from the natural world. Imagining what future changes technology may impose, Jerry Brotton skillfully reminds us how crucial the four cardinal directions have been to everyone who has ever walked our planet. For anyone interested in history, geography, or surprising new ways to think about the world at large, Four Points of the Compass will be a stimulating experience.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Praise for Four Points of the Compass:

A Next Big Idea Club Must-Read Book (November 2024)
Named a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Independent Review of Books

“Mr. Brotton’s evocative book investigates those shifting meanings, drawing from religion, history, literature and geopolitics to argue that north, south, east, and west now function more as loaded ideological terms than as navigational aids . . . He establishes that they remain potent in fascinating and surprising ways.”—Barbara Spindel, Wall Street Journal

“Explores the whats and whys of those little arrows that guide our feet and, occasionally, our fate . . . Remarkably informative.”—Ian Volner, New York Times Book Review

“Brotton is at his best when he analyzes how directional terms have come to define us”—Anne Cassidy, Washington Independent Review of Books

“Brotton’s fascinating global history takes in science, meteorology and cultural perceptions.”—New Statesman

“Intriguing . . . Measured and precise . . . A unique and observant history.”—Chris Allnutt, Financial Times

“For helping us navigate the history of directions, Brotton’s book is the perfect compass.”—Literary Review

“With a compass to show the way, a professor of English and history undertakes an engaging journey of discovery . . . Brotton keeps his complex story moving, knitting technical information and anecdotes into a vivid tapestry.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Readers who enjoy history, science, and conceptually innovative nonfiction will adore this title.”—Booklist

“Intriguing and enlightening.”—Geographical Magazine

“A wide-ranging, well-researched tour.”—Chris Smith, Winnipeg Free Press

Praise for The Sultan and the Queen:

“Jerry Brotton’s wonderful book reveals this instructive history of Protestant England’s intense interactions with Islam, showing how Muslims shaped English culture, consumerism and literature during the half-millennium between the Crusades and the rise of the British Empire in the Middle East.”—Wall Street Journal

“Elegant and entertaining.”—New York Times Book Review

“The Sultan and the Queen evokes an England struggling to find a place for itself in a world that it had not yet learned to dominate, and often making colossal diplomatic blunders in the process. Brotton is a gifted writer who is able to present this history as an exciting series of critical and suspense-filled encounters.”—Washington Post

“Both a colorful narrative of that extraordinary time and a reminder that our own fortunes and those of the wider Islamic world have been intertwined for much longer than we might think.”—The Times (UK)

“Impressive and highly readable . . . Brotton’s book crackles with an energy that illuminates and vivifies its larger claims.”—Financial Times

“Jerry Brotton’s sparkling new book sets out just how extensive and complex England’s relationship with the Arab and Muslim world once was . . . Excellent.”—The Guardian

“Fascinating and timely . . . An illuminating account of a neglected aspect of Elizabethan England:  its rich, complex, and ambivalent relations with the Muslim world.”—Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve

“An exceptionally rich and brilliant book. In bringing to life Elizabethan England’s ambivalent engagement with Islam, Jerry Brotton shows how profoundly that encounter shaped English trade, diplomacy, and the Islam-obsessed drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The story he tells could not be more timely.”—James Shapiro, author The Year of Lear: 1606

Praise for A History of the World in 12 Maps: 

A New York Times Bestseller

“Maps allow the armchair traveler to roam the world, the diplomat to argue his points, the ruler to administer his country, the warrior to plan his campaigns and the propagandist to boost his cause. In addition, they can be extraordinarily beautiful . . . All these facets are represented in British historian Jerry Brotton’s rich A History of the World in 12 Maps.”—Wall Street Journal

“[A] brilliant exercise in global history.”—The Independent

“This history of twelve epoch-defining maps—including Google’s—is a revelation . . . Brotton offers an excellent guide to understanding these influential attempts at psychogeographical transcendence.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[A] rewarding journey for the intellectually intrepid.”—Kirkus Reviews

“If there’s a single takeaway from this fascinating and richly illustrated book, it’s that mapmaking is perennially contentious.”—The Daily Beast 

 “A stimulating and thought-provoking study of how the mixing of science, politics, and even religion influenced and continues to influence cartography.”—Booklist

“Jerry Brotton’s book dips into maps spanning millennia of human experience, from Ptolemy's Geography (circa 150 AD) all the way up to Google Earth, the dynamic, increasingly omnipresent Internet Age way that we answer the age-old question ‘Where am I?’ . . . Along the way, he finds some marvelous things.”—Christian Science Monitor

JANUARY 2025 - AudioFile

This brief but delightful and highly informed audiobook begins and ends with blue spheres. First, listeners learn that the blue marble that astronauts photographed from space actually had the South Pole on top until NASA flipped the image. It ends with the ever-present iPhone blue dot that locates Apple map users. Narrator Liam Garrigan has a natural storytelling style, and his British accent and professional delivery work well in this exploration of geographic direction. He narrates at a good pace and a sensible cadence that make this science-oriented text move almost too quickly. The central idea is how the cardinal directions gave life meaning throughout history but are now being displaced in the digital age, when the ideas of east against west and south versus north have geopolitical, rather than geographical, meanings. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2024-06-11
With a compass to show the way, a professor of English and history undertakes an engaging journey of discovery.

Finding your way from where you are to where you want to go might seem like an easy concept in today’s digital world, but there many colorful stories about the history of direction and navigation. In his latest book, Brotton, author ofA History of the World in 12 Maps andThe Sultan and the Queen, unravels them. Even ancient societies had an organized sense of direction, linked to the rising and setting of the sun, and the constant North Star and its southern equivalent were some of the first astronomical features to be recognized. The result was a division of the world into four basic directions, with rare exceptions—e.g., the Aztecs had five color-coded cardinal directions. The next big step was the magnetic compass, which, when coupled with reliable methods of calculating latitude and longitude, led to transoceanic travel and the convention that North would be located at the top of maps. That idea has continued, but many terms, such as “Middle East,” have little to do with geography and more to do with political considerations—in that case, the outlook of the British Empire. Likewise, the value of the term “the West,” which usually means the European and English-speaking parts of the world, depends largely on where one is standing. The author worries that the new dominance of GPS and smartphones could disconnect us from a shared sense of place as well as a relationship with the natural world. Thus, he offers a piece of advice: On the next clear night, look for the North Star, and think about all the others who have done so.

Brotton keeps his complex story moving, knitting technical information and anecdotes into a vivid tapestry.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940191004518
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	11/12/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

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