The Phantom Atlas

Nine-foot giants were once thought to stalk the Patagonian landscape. The Island of California was known to drift off the coast of North America. The Mountains of Kong were believed to stretch across the continent of Africa. The Phantom Atlas is a guide to the world not as it is, but as it was imagined to be. It’s a world of ghost islands, imagined mountain ranges, mythical civilizations, ship-wrecking beasts, and other fictitious features introduced on maps and atlases even up to the present day through mistakes, misunderstanding, fantasies, and outright lies. This richly illustrated book collects and explores the colorful real histories behind a striking range of antique maps that are all in some ways a little too good to be true. Author Edward Brooke-Hitching investigates the places where exploration and mythology meet, using gorgeous atlas images as springboards for tales of deranged buccaneers, seafaring monks, heroes, swindlers, and other amazing stories behind cartography’s greatest phantoms.