A review by barnesstorming
The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps by Edward Brooke-Hitching

4.0

This was quite the antidote for the uber-heavy novels and biographies I read this summer. It's episodic in nature, with all the phantom lands, islands, seas, mountains, et al, organized alphabetically. I'm a sucker for old maps, and this book is a treasure trove of them, including several gorgeous gatefold or two-page spreads. I read the American edition (which was produced after the British one) and was very surprised to see one entry dead-stop at the bottom of a page, mid-sentence. I have no idea how much copy was left out — a word or two, or an entire page — but in the end, it's a small flaw.

If you enjoy either historic voyages of discovery or historic fraudulent claims of fame, this is the book you'll want to read.