Every Map Is a Lie explores the fascinating history of how humans have tried to represent the world around them, and the surprising ways those representations have shaped how we understand it.
We tend to think of maps as objective pictures of reality. But every map is a choice. Someone decides what to include, what to leave out, what belongs at the centre, which names to use and where boundaries should be drawn. Some choices are mathematical or practical. Others are shaped by culture, politics, technology and power. A map can help us navigate the world, but it can also influence how we see it.
Through 25 ideas, Every Map Is a Lie takes readers on a journey through the history of cartography, from some of the earliest attempts to record places and journeys to the digital maps we now carry in our pockets. Along the way, we encounter Babylonian clay tablets, ancient navigation, the development of coordinates and projections, Mercator's famous world map, the prime meridian at Greenwich, the naming of America and the rise of printed maps and atlases.
The story also reveals the less obvious power of maps. Maps have been used to claim territory, establish borders, define countries and sometimes make entire peoples or places appear invisible. The Treaty of Tordesillas, the Berlin Conference and the idea of terra nullius show how a line on a map can have consequences far beyond the piece of paper on which it is drawn.
Not all maps try to be geographically accurate. The London Underground map deliberately distorts the city to make its transport system easier to understand. An upside-down map of the world challenges our assumptions about what should be at the top. Modern digital maps bring their own questions, as algorithms, satellite imagery and enormous amounts of location data increasingly determine how we navigate and experience the world.
The book also looks beyond the maps we know. Our understanding of the oceans remains surprisingly incomplete, coastlines are changing as sea levels rise and new technologies continue to reveal places that earlier mapmakers could never have imagined.
Written as an accessible and curious exploration rather than a traditional history of cartography, Every Map Is a Lie invites readers to look at familiar maps with fresh eyes. It asks simple but surprisingly deep questions: Who decided that north should be at the top? Why does Europe appear at the centre of so many world maps? Who gets to draw a border? What happens when a map leaves someone out? And can a map ever truly represent the world?
Every Map Is a Lie is ultimately about much more than geography. It is about the choices humans make when we try to simplify a complicated world - and how those choices can influence what we believe to be true.
Because the map is never the world itself. It is an interpretation of the world.
And once you understand that, you may never look at a map quite the same way again.
