The Island of Lost Maps

by Miles Harvey

A book about a guy who ended up getting into the world of old maps and his eventual capture. He used to go to research libraries with a razor blade and steal from old books, maps that he would sell on the market, after he set himself up as a dealer of old maps, for hundreds and thousands of dollars.

During the Roman Empire, it was illegal for a private citizen to own a world map. I learned in it that maps used to be guarded secrets ofttimes punishable by death. When the Portuguese for example controlled the sea routes to India, NO ONE could go there outside of their own countrymen and the maps were not to be reproduced at all - especially for export.

Frances Wood an expert on Chinese history says that there's no proof that Marco Polo most likely never even went further west than Constantinople, Turkey because he never mentioned the most obvious aspects of Chinese life.