Tracks on the Ocean: A History of Trailblazing, Maps, and Maritime Travel

An engaging look at ocean routes’ complicated beginnings and elusive impact.

Sara Caputo’s Tracks on the Ocean is a sweeping history of how we have understood routes of travel over the ocean and how we came to represent that movement as a cartographical line. Focusing on the representation of sea journeys in the Western world from the early sixteenth century to the present, Caputo deftly argues that the depiction of these lines is inextricable from European imperialism, the rise of modern...