Nicholas Crane Book order

An almost forgotten moment in history, a tale for our times, this is the true story of the mission to discover the shape of the Earth. They knew the world wasn't a sphere. Either it stretched at the poles or it bulged at the equator. But which? They needed to know because accurate maps saved lives at sea and made money on land. But measuring the Earth was so difficult that most thought it impossible. The world's first international team of scientists was sent to a continent of unmapped rainforests and ice-shrouded volcanoes where they attempted to measure the length on the ground of one degree of latitude. Beset by egos and disease, storms and earthquakes, mutiny and murder, they struggled for ten years to reach the single figure they sought. Latitude is an epic story of survival and science set in mountain camps and remote observatories. It is also a story of exploration in which an unruly gaggle of misfits made breakthroughs in rubber and platinum, gravity and fogbows, quinine and Inca archaeology. A breathtaking tale of courage in adversity, it is celebrated today as the first modern exploring expedition

One word binds us all: geography. We are all geographers, human beings who care about the places we think of as 'home' - our habitat. And yet we have lost touch with the connection between our actions and the state of the planet that we all share. We need a new narrative that restores the connections between humanity and the Earth. We are being confronted by a daily barrage of geographical stories on climate change, geopolitics, population growth, migration, dwindling resources, polluted oceans and natural hazards. These are planetary concerns affecting all people and all places. They are challenges which can be addressed through geography. In this short but powerful book, Nicholas Crane makes the compelling case that never has geography been so important. On this finite orb, with its battered habitat, sustained in dark space by a thin, life-giving atmosphere, we have reached a point in our collective geographical journey where knowledge is the best guarantor of the future. [NOTE: published in hardback as YOU ARE HERE]

A celebration of the vital role of geography in our understanding of the big issues facing humanity and the planet today

Intrepid presenter Nicholas Crane investigates eight epic journeys, following in the footsteps of our greatest indigenous explorers.

The history of 12,000 years of the British landscape, from the Ice Age to the twenty-first century, by prizewinning author Nicholas Crane, co-presenter of COAST.

Along our shores, towering cliffs from the age of the dinosaurs rise beside wide estuaries teeming with wildlife, while Victorian ports share waterfronts with imposing fortifications.

This atlas is packed with information about the way in which communities and cultures across the world have been shaped by their local environments and it looks at the ideas and initiatives which are shaping the future.

Gerard Mercator (1512 1594) was born at the dawn of the Age of Discovery, when the world was beginning to be discovered and carved up by navigators, geographers and cartographers. Mercator was the greatest and most ingenious cartographer of them all: it was he who coined the word atlas and solved the riddle of converting the three dimensional globe into a two dimensional map while retaining true compass bearings. It is Mercator's Projection that NASA are using today to map Mars. How did Mercator reconcile his religious beliefs with a science that would make Christian maps obsolete? How did a man whose imagination roamed continents endure imprisonment by the Inquisition? Crane brings this great man vividly to life, underlying it with the maps themselves: maps that brought to a rapt public wonders as remarkable as today's cyber world.