author : Stephen S. Hall

Much as the compass and the ship allowed explorers to map the globe five hundred years ago, dazzling new technologies have allowed present-day scientists—from astronomers to neuroscientists, geneticists to mathematicians—to map altogether new and strange terrains. A satellite-generated ultraviolet map proves that the hole in the ozone layer is not simply an apocalyptic abstraction. The cartography of human chromosomes allows us to map heredity down to its smallest increments.

Ranging from the maps of the ocean floor to surveys of remote galaxies, from portraits of subatomic collisions to an astonishing “landscape” of the mathematical constant pi, Mapping the Next Millennium is beautifully written, visually stunning, and conceptually enthralling. Like the earliest maps themselves, it reminds us that we live in another great age of exploration and that the only thing more varied and vast than the physical world is the imagination and intelligence of the humans who map it.