Description
Longlisted for the 2025 BSHS Hughes Prize 'Enthralling' Philip Ball 'Ingenious' Sujit Sivasundaram In Tracks on the Ocean, Sara Caputo tells how our journeys around the globe became fixed lines on maps - and how journey lines themselves reshaped maps and the way that we view the world. From Captain Cook's route across the South Seas to the disorientating power of digital technology, the tracks we've left on the oceans - trading, exploring and conquering - are a hidden record of humanity's impact on the planet. Revealing their histories, Caputo uncovers a fascinating new history of maritime travel and modernity. Weaving human history, cartography, literature and climate science, Tracks on the Ocean reveals how, on the path to discovery, we have changed the world.
A trailblazing history of how the marks left on maps tell the story of the world
About the Author
Dr Sara Caputo is a Senior Research Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge. A specialist in maritime history, she is the winner of the Prince Consort and Thirwell Prize, as well as the Boydell and Brewer Prize. Tracks on the Ocean was awarded the Ideas Prize for non-fiction.
Reviews
An erudite and accomplished account of human wayfaring * New Statesman *
Fascinating ... A fine, clear writer, Caputo tells a number of good stories which speak eloquently * Times Literary Supplement *
Full of extraordinary detail ... Caputo does a fine job in conveying the pioneering, fearless spirit of those early journeys, made into the unknown * Geographical *
A triumph ... an act of impressive scholarship * BBC History Magazine *
Intriguing and original, Tracks on the Ocean has a scope and relevance that transcends the high seas -- Maxim Samson, author * Invisible Lines *
The best kind of history ... a dazzling piece of research which draws the reader in, engages them directly and challenges them to question how and what they see -- Katherine Parker, author * Historical Sea Charts *
Caputo takes a most ingenious topic, the foamy track of a ship, as a meditation on centuries of globalisation and imperialism. Her story of this constantly reinvented and reinscribed line of passage is a bracingly novel oceanic history. It also shows the origins, costs and legacies of human mobility: an urgent concern of our times -- Sujit Sivasundaram, author * Waves Across the South *
'An enthralling account of maritime wayfaring from Odysseus to Magellan to GPS. Accessible and entertaining, as well as deeply erudite and constantly mind-expanding. This is a model of how history should be written -- Philip Ball, author * Curiosity: How Science Became Interested In Everything *
Sara Caputo's fascinating story of the mapping of the oceans is full of intrigue, discovery, and drama. A deeply knowledgeable yet readable history of the cartography of water -- Alastair Bonnett, author * The Geography of Nostalgia *
An engrossing and beautifully chartered literary journey through history, seamanship and maritime map-making -- Vitali Vitaliev FRSG, author * Trucks in the Garden of Eden: In Search of Britain's Utopias *
Sara Caputo had an enviably ingenious idea, which few could conceive and very few execute: a history of how people have kept records of routes, in defiance of trackless nature and deficient technology. With distant vision, broad scope and deep scholarship she picks out a fascinating path and leads readers along it with the fluency of a good guide and the confidence of a practised pilot -- Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, author * 1492: The Year Our World Began *
Striking for its originality and absorbing in its narrative verve, Tracks on the Ocean makes something we think we know-maps-strange and new: a source of knowledge but also distortion, confusion, surveillance, and violence. Spanning the globe and hundreds of years, it is a book of fresh vision and necessary insight -- Bathsheba Demuth, author * Floating Coast *
From an unassuming starting point - the 'tracks' of voyages reproduced on maps - Caputo takes us on our very own journey of discovery. Through these delicate impressions we see first-hand the development of empire, explore the subjectivity of knowledge, experience the tenacity of state control and re-think humankind's relationship with the natural world. Representing deep learning, but written with passion and precision, Tracks on the Ocean is maritime history at its finest -- James Davey, author * Tempest: The Royal Navy and the Age of Revolutions *
An exemplary intellectual history of mapping * Pacific Historical Review *
Book Information
ISBN 9781788168830
Author Dr Sara Caputo
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint Profile Books Ltd
Publisher Profile Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 290g
Dimensions(mm) 196mm * 128mm * 24mm
A trailblazing history of how the marks left on maps tell the story of the world
About the Author
Dr Sara Caputo is a Senior Research Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge. A specialist in maritime history, she is the winner of the Prince Consort and Thirwell Prize, as well as the Boydell and Brewer Prize. Tracks on the Ocean was awarded the Ideas Prize for non-fiction.
Reviews
An erudite and accomplished account of human wayfaring * New Statesman *
Fascinating ... A fine, clear writer, Caputo tells a number of good stories which speak eloquently * Times Literary Supplement *
Full of extraordinary detail ... Caputo does a fine job in conveying the pioneering, fearless spirit of those early journeys, made into the unknown * Geographical *
A triumph ... an act of impressive scholarship * BBC History Magazine *
Intriguing and original, Tracks on the Ocean has a scope and relevance that transcends the high seas -- Maxim Samson, author * Invisible Lines *
The best kind of history ... a dazzling piece of research which draws the reader in, engages them directly and challenges them to question how and what they see -- Katherine Parker, author * Historical Sea Charts *
Caputo takes a most ingenious topic, the foamy track of a ship, as a meditation on centuries of globalisation and imperialism. Her story of this constantly reinvented and reinscribed line of passage is a bracingly novel oceanic history. It also shows the origins, costs and legacies of human mobility: an urgent concern of our times -- Sujit Sivasundaram, author * Waves Across the South *
'An enthralling account of maritime wayfaring from Odysseus to Magellan to GPS. Accessible and entertaining, as well as deeply erudite and constantly mind-expanding. This is a model of how history should be written -- Philip Ball, author * Curiosity: How Science Became Interested In Everything *
Sara Caputo's fascinating story of the mapping of the oceans is full of intrigue, discovery, and drama. A deeply knowledgeable yet readable history of the cartography of water -- Alastair Bonnett, author * The Geography of Nostalgia *
An engrossing and beautifully chartered literary journey through history, seamanship and maritime map-making -- Vitali Vitaliev FRSG, author * Trucks in the Garden of Eden: In Search of Britain's Utopias *
Sara Caputo had an enviably ingenious idea, which few could conceive and very few execute: a history of how people have kept records of routes, in defiance of trackless nature and deficient technology. With distant vision, broad scope and deep scholarship she picks out a fascinating path and leads readers along it with the fluency of a good guide and the confidence of a practised pilot -- Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, author * 1492: The Year Our World Began *
Striking for its originality and absorbing in its narrative verve, Tracks on the Ocean makes something we think we know-maps-strange and new: a source of knowledge but also distortion, confusion, surveillance, and violence. Spanning the globe and hundreds of years, it is a book of fresh vision and necessary insight -- Bathsheba Demuth, author * Floating Coast *
From an unassuming starting point - the 'tracks' of voyages reproduced on maps - Caputo takes us on our very own journey of discovery. Through these delicate impressions we see first-hand the development of empire, explore the subjectivity of knowledge, experience the tenacity of state control and re-think humankind's relationship with the natural world. Representing deep learning, but written with passion and precision, Tracks on the Ocean is maritime history at its finest -- James Davey, author * Tempest: The Royal Navy and the Age of Revolutions *
An exemplary intellectual history of mapping * Pacific Historical Review *
Book Information
ISBN 9781788168830
Author Dr Sara Caputo
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint Profile Books Ltd
Publisher Profile Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 290g
Dimensions(mm) 196mm * 128mm * 24mm
