Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea

"An energetic, all-inclusive, and amusing account of man's impressive capacity for self-delusion." —Steve Jones, author of Darwin's Ghost

Contrary to popular belief fostered in countless school classrooms the world over, Christopher Columbus did not discover that the earth was round. The idea of a spherical world had been widely accepted in educated circles from as early as the fourth century b.c. Yet, bizarrely, it was not until the supposedly more rational nineteenth century that the noti...