The gripping story of Queen Elizabeth's bold alliance with the Ottoman sultan by The New York Times bestselling author of A History of the World in Twelve MapsPublished in the UK as This Orient IsleWhen Queen Elizabeth was excommunicated by the pope in 1570, she found herself in an awkward predicament. England had always depended on trade. Now its key markets would be closed to her Protestant merchants. To complicate matters the staunchly Catholic king of Spain was determined to destroy her, bolstered by the gold pouring in from the New World. In a bold decision with far-reaching consequences, Elizabeth set her sights on the East. She sent an emissary to the shah of Iran (by way of Ivan the Terrible in Moscow), wooed the king of Morocco, trading gunpowder for sugar, and entered into an unprecedented alliance with the powerful Ottoman Sultan Murad III. This marked the beginning of an extraordinary alignment with Muslim powers and of...

A fascinating look at twelve maps—from Ancient Greece to Google Earth—and how they changed our world In this masterful study, historian and cartography expert Jerry Brotton explores a dozen of history's most influential maps, from stone tablet to vibrant computer screen. Starting with Ptolemy, "father of modern geography," and ending with satellite cartography, A History of the World in 12 Maps brings maps from classical Greece, Renaissance Europe, and the Islamic and Buddhist worlds to life and reveals their influence on how we—literally—look at our present world. As Brotton shows, the long road to our present geographical reality was rife with controversy, manipulation, and special interests trumping science. Through the centuries maps have been wielded to promote any number of imperial, religious, and economic agendas, and have represented the idiosyncratic and uneasy fusion of science and subjectivity. Brotton also...