By the standards of the 14th century, the writing style of the man who called himself Sir John Mandeville is so informal as to be nearly chummy: "He who wants to pass over the sea to Jerusalem, may go by many ways, both by sea and by land depending on the countries he comes from; many ways come to a single end. But do not think I shall tell of all the towns and cities and castles that men shall go by, for then I must make too long a tale of it." Historians remain skeptical as to whether the author really did journey to the Holy Land and Egypt, or hire himself out as a soldier to the Great Khan of China. Whatever the case, it is indisputable that he is one of the first modern travel writers, as we have come to know the genre, and that his book was considered authoritative in matters geographical throughout Europe--consulted by Leonardo da Vinci and Christopher Columbus alike.

Product Description: Mapping Medieval Geographies explores the ways in which geographical knowledge, ideas and traditions were formed in Europe during the Middle Ages. Leading scholars reveal the connections between Islamic, Christian, Biblical and Classical geographical traditions from Antiquity to the later Middle Ages and Renaissance...read more

Territory is one of the central political concepts of the modern world and, indeed, functions as the primary way the world is divided and controlled politically. Yet territory has not received the critical attention afforded to other crucial concepts such as sovereignty, rights, and justice. While territory continues to matter politically, and territorial disputes and arrangements are studied in detail, the concept of territory itself is often neglected today. Where did the idea of exclusive ownership of a portion of the earth’s surface come from, and what kinds of complexities are hidden behind that seemingly straightforward definition?           The Birth of Territory provides a detailed account of the emergence of territory within Western political thought. Looking at ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and early modern thought, Stuart Elden examines the evolution of the concept of territory from ancient Greece to the seventeenth century to determine how we arrived at our contemporary understanding. Elden addresses a range of historical, political, and literary texts and practices, as well as a number of key players—historians, poets, philosophers, theologians, and secular political theorists—and in doing so sheds new light on the way the world came to be ordered and how the earth’s surface is divided, controlled, and administered.

Product Description: Everyone knows that in 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic, seeking a new route to the East. Few note, however, that Columbus's intention was also to sail south, to the tropics...read more

Product Description: The area of Middle Eastern geography and travel has attracted large numbers of scholars over the last fifty years. This new collection from Routledge features key articles from the field to create a major and continuing resource for scholars and students alike...read more

Product Description: The Book of John Mandeville has tended to be neglected by modern teachers and scholars, yet this intriguing and copious work has much to offer the student of medieval literature, history, and culture. [It] was a contemporary bestseller, providing readers with exotic information about locales from Constantinople to China and about the social and religious practices of peoples such as the Greeks, Muslims, and Brahmins...read more

Product Description: Scythia and the islands in the Ocean-Sea, the farthest northern and northeastern regions of the world known to ancient and medieval geographers, roughly correspond to modern-day Scandinavia, Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia...read more

Product Description: One of the most influential books of the medieval period, John Mandeville's fourteenth-century work was written, ostensibly, to encourage and instruct pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land. A thorough compendium of medieval lore, the travel book proved to be a great success throughout Europe...read more

Product Description: Book by Kohanski, Tamarah

Product Description: "Early medieval geographical tradition resembles Andersen's ugly duckling. It often gets scolded and cannot find a place of its own, all because people almost invariably misunderstand its true nature." Thus begins Natalia Lozovsky's new book, The Earth Is Our Book: Geographical Knowledge in the Latin West ca...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This edition provides a critical English translation of the 16th-century Danish work that is the epitome or summary of part of the original Mandeville's Travels.

(view table of contents)

(view table of contents)

Includes botanical names, plant anatomy, gardening techniques and tools, pests and diseases, and famous gardens and gardeners

It is now generally accepted the Leif Eriksson sailed from Greenland across the Davis Strait and made landfalls on the North American continent almost a thousand years ago, but what happened in this vast area during the next five hundred years has long been a source of disagreement among scholars. Using new archeological, scientific, and documentary information (much of it in Scandinavian languages that are a bar to most Western historians), this book confronts many of the unanswered questions about early exploration and colonization along the shores of the Davis Strait.The author brings together two distinct but tangential fields of inquiry: the history of medieval Greenland and its connections with the Norse discovery of North America, and fifteenth-century British maritime history and pre-colonial voyages to North America, including that of John Cabot. In order to evaluate the situation in Norse Greenland at the end of the fifteenth century (when documented English and Portuguese voyages of northern exploration began), the author follows the colony's development—its domestic economy and foreign trade and its cultural and ecclesiastical affinities—from its inception in the tenth century. In the process, she looks critically at commonly held views that have gone unchallenged until now.Among the questions about which the author sets forth new evidence and conclusions are: the extent to which Greenlanders explored and exploited North America after Leif Eriksson, the reasons for the baffling disappearance of the Norse settlement in Greenland, the connection between their disappearance and the beginning of the voyages of exploration that began around A.D. 1500, the routes by which information concerning previous voyages traveled, the history before Cabot of the advance of English fishing fleets from Icelandic waters to the coasts of Labrador, and the influence of the roman Catholic Church on Norse Greenland.

Includes botanical names, plant anatomy, gardening techniques and tools, pests and diseases, and famous gardens and gardeners

One of Richard Nixon's most trusted advisors sheds light on White House politics and the Watergate scandal

Product Description: The Hereford Mappa Mundi is the largest and most elaborate world map surviving from before the fifteenth century. Made in the late thirteenth century at Lincoln by one Richard of Holdingham, it was then taken to Hereford, which has been its home ever since...read more

Product Description: Robert Silverberg, whose work is well known to science fiction fans, originally published The Realm of Prester John in 1972. The first modern account of the genesis of a great medieval myth — which was perpetuated for centuries by European Christians who looked to Asia and Africa for a strong ruler out of the east — Silverberg's romantic and fabulous tale is now available in paperback for the first time...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)