Tracks on the Ocean

“Lines on maps have real power to influence the world, defining claims of ownership and entitlement. In Tracks on the Ocean, maritime historian Sara Caputo looks at the inky threads made on sea charts to showcase examples of navigational prowess, or sometimes, how they inadvertently record a lack thereof. Caputo reveals that, while there has been a long history of outlining routes, tracing individual journeys via such lines appears to have only started in the 16th century.”– “Dialogue Earth”“Sara Caputo’s work, Tracks on the Ocean, should join the bibliography of works that will significantly change how scholars and students conceptualize not just the past but how people in the past viewed their own lives and ideas … From her argument, to her use of examples, to her conclusions, Caputo provides an exemplary intellectual history of mapping and the concept of the world.”– “Pacific Historical Review”“Tracks on the Ocean, by the maritime historian Sara Caputo, is an erudite and accomplished account of such human wayfaring. Tracks are not just useful tools for the gathering of knowledge, but for making claims and for telling stories.”– “The New Statesman”“Tracks On The Ocean is an enthralling account of how we have conceptualised and imagined marine wayfaring through time, from Odysseus to Magellan to GPS. It is also a model of how history should be written: accessible and entertaining as well as deeply erudite and constantly mind-expanding.”–Philip Ball, author of ‘Beautiful Experiments: An Illustrated History of Experimental Science’

Sara Caputo is a senior research fellow and director of studies in history at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge. She is the author of Foreign Jack Tars: The British Navy and Transnational Seafarers during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.