The Art of the Map: An Illustrated History of Map Elements and Embellishments / Dennis Reinhartz

This lavishly illustrated history of the golden age of cartography, from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, explores not only the embellishments on maps but also what they reveal about the world in which they were created. Here there be monsters real and imagined; ships actual and archetypical; newly discovered flora such as corn and tobacco; fauna ranging from buffalo to unicorns; godlike beings and fantasy-like depictions of native peoples. The stunningly rendered images illuminate an entire world.