"As much a work of art as a history of cartography and exploration, this superb volume .documents the 19th-century fervor for comparative maps and tableaux-illustrations showing, for example, the highest mountains in the world juxtaposed against one another. A chapter introducing the cartographic phenomenon in general is followed by one on the sketch that started it all, Alexander von Humboldt's 1805 Geographie des plantes e¿quinoxiales. The beautifully reproduced illustrations, many of which are housed in the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection at Stanford University, are fascinating by themselves but are accompanied by essays examining the images and their creation." - Library Journal -- -.