Tracking the atlas from its pre-Gutenberg days, when it was a handmade object commissioned by royalty and merchant princes through its interactive, digitized present, Images of the World vividly reveals human history through a unique lens. With this book, we marvel at China in the millennium after Christ and relive the days when maps were closely guarded tools for dominating an unexplored world. Based on an international symposium of the world's leading cartographers and geographical scholars and edited by curators of the Library of Congress' world-renowned map collection, this handsome volume opens up the true art and drama of mapmaking and reveals the wonders and terrors of the worlds the atlases portrayed. One hundred and ninety-six illustrations, including many never-before-published rare, historical maps, most from the Library of Congress' own collection, make this remarkably vivid compendium a book that geography and history buffs, scholars, students, and ordinary readers will not want to miss.