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Cover image of Apollo's Eye
Cover image of Apollo's Eye
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Apollo's Eye

A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination

Denis Cosgrove

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Winner of the Association of American Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publishing Award in Geography & Earth Sciences

"Earthbound humans are unable to embrace more than a tiny part of the planetary surface. But in their imagination they can grasp the whole of the earth, as a surface or a solid body, to locate it within infinities of space and to communicate and share images of it."—from the Preface

Long before we had the ability to photograph the earth from space—to see our planet as it would be seen by the Greek god Apollo—images of the earth as a globe had captured popular imagination...

Winner of the Association of American Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publishing Award in Geography & Earth Sciences

"Earthbound humans are unable to embrace more than a tiny part of the planetary surface. But in their imagination they can grasp the whole of the earth, as a surface or a solid body, to locate it within infinities of space and to communicate and share images of it."—from the Preface

Long before we had the ability to photograph the earth from space—to see our planet as it would be seen by the Greek god Apollo—images of the earth as a globe had captured popular imagination. In Apollo's Eye, geographer Denis Cosgrove examines the historical implications for the West of conceiving and representing the earth as a globe: a unified, spherical body. Cosgrove traces how ideas of globalism and globalization have shifted historically in relation to changing images of the earth, from antiquity to the Space Age. He connects the evolving image of a unified globe to politically powerful conceptions of human unity.

Reviews

Reviews

Well written, copiously illustrated, and with an excellent section of notes at the end of each chapter, the author and publishers of this book are to be commended.

The richly embroidered garment he has woven together provides a really stimulating argument for anyone interested in the links between representation and political process... Apollo's Eye is constantly thought-provoking.

Apollo's Eye will appeal to a broad range of readers, in part because its subject is so keenly relevant to current world events. Cosgrove's erudition is as impressive as ever... Cosgrove shows convincingly how successive understandings of the globe were inflected and distinguished by new technologies and techniques of analysis and representation.

A fascinating and unique history.

About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6.125
x
9.25
Pages
352
ISBN
9780801874444
Illustration Description
49 halftones, 5 line drawings
Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Imperial and Poetic Globe
Chapter 2. Classical Globe
Chapter 3. Christian Globe
Chapter 4. Oceanic Globe
Chapter 5. Visionary Globe
Chapter 6. Emblematic Globe and the Poetics of the World
Chapte

Chapter 1. Imperial and Poetic Globe
Chapter 2. Classical Globe
Chapter 3. Christian Globe
Chapter 4. Oceanic Globe
Chapter 5. Visionary Globe
Chapter 6. Emblematic Globe and the Poetics of the World
Chapter 7. Enlightened Globe
Chapter 8. Modern Globe
Chapter 9. Virtual Globe

Author Bio
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Denis Cosgrove

Denis Cosgrove is Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. His previous books include The Iconography of Landscape, The Palladian Landscape: Geographical Change and Its Cultural Representations in Sixteenth-Century Italy, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, and Mappings.