A Map of the World

The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 59 mins)
• By Simon Winchester
• Narrated By Simon Winchester

In 1793, William Smith, the orphan son of a village blacksmith, made a startling discovery that was to turn the science of geology on its head. While surveying the route for a canal near Bath, he noticed that the fossils found in one layer of the rocks he was excavating were very different from those found in another. And out of that realization came an epiphany: that by following these fossils one could trace layers of rocks as they dipped, rose and fell, clear across England and clear across the world.

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 49 mins)
• By Tim Marshall
• Narrated By Scott Brick
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Maps have a mysterious hold over us. Whether ancient, crumbling parchments or generated by Google, maps tell us things we want to know, not only about our current location or where we are going but about the world in general. And yet, when it comes to geo-politics, much of what we are told is generated by analysts and other experts who have neglected to refer to a map of the place in question.

The Ghost Map

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 38 mins)
• By Steven Johnson
• Narrated By Alan Sklar
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

This is a thrilling historical account of the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London and a brilliant exploration of how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease, cities, science, and the modern world.

Boston's Public Schools Have Adopted a New, More Accurate World Map

• ORIGINAL (4 mins)
• By David Leveille
• Narrated By Marco Werman

Boston's public schools are leading the way with the Gall-Peters projection world maps for its classrooms.

Off the Edge of the Map: Marco Polo, Captain Cook, and 9 Other Travelers and Explorers That Pushed the Boundaries of the Known World

• UNABRIDGED (5 hrs and 48 mins)
• By Michael Rank
• Narrated By Kevin Pierce

An exciting new audiobook on the greatest explorers in history and how their discoveries shaped the modern world. Whether it is Rabban Bar Sauma, the 13th-century Chinese monk commissioned by the Mongols to travel West form a military alliance against the Islam; Marco Polo, who opened a window to the East for Europe; or Captain James Cook, whose maritime voyages of discovery created the global economy of the 21st century, each of these explorers had an indelible impact on the modern world. This audiobook will look at the 11 greatest explorers in history.

Mr. Selden's Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 16 mins)
• By Timothy Brook
• Narrated By George Backman
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

From the author of the award-winning Vermeer’s Hat, a historical detective story decoding a long-forgotten link between 17th-century Europe and China.

Timothy Brook’s award-winning Vermeer’s Hat unfolded the early history of globalization, using Vermeer’s paintings to show how objects like beaver hats and porcelain bowls began to circulate around the world. Now he plumbs the mystery of a single artifact that offers new insights into global connections centuries old.

Half Moon: Henry Hudson and the Voyage That Redrew the Map of the New World

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 39 mins)
• By Douglas Hunter
• Narrated By Kurt Elftmann
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

The year 2009 marks the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s discovery of the majestic river that bears his name. Just in time for this milestone, Douglas Hunter, sailor, scholar, and storyteller, has written the first book-length history of the 1609 adventure that put New York on the map. Hudson was commissioned by the mighty Dutch East India Company to find a northeastern passage over Russia to the lucrative ports of China. But the inscrutable Hudson, defying his orders, turned his ship around and instead headed west....

Why There Are Sea Monsters Lurking in Early World Maps

• ORIGINAL (5 mins)
• By David Leveille
• Narrated By Marco Werman

"Why There Are Sea Monsters Lurking in Early World Maps" is from the April 11, 2016 edition of PRI's The World.

Dog DNA Study Maps Breeds Across the World

• UNABRIDGED (3 mins)
• By Helen Thompson
• Narrated By Jamie Renell

Mapping the relationships between different dog breeds is rough (get it?), but a team of scientists at the National Institutes of Health did just that using the DNA of 1,346 dogs from 161 breeds. Their analysis, which appears April 25 in Cell Reports, offers a lot to chew on.

Facebook's New Map of World Population Could Help Get Billions Online

• UNABRIDGED (4 mins)
• By Tom Simonite
• Narrated By Elizabeth Wells

Facebook keeps its map of the social connections of the 1.6 billion people who use the service each month to itself. But it is giving away for free new maps it is building that describe patterns of population density in the world’s poorest countries in unprecedented detail.

Build a 3-D Virtual World With This Crowdsourced Map of the Real World

• UNABRIDGED (3 mins)
• By Signe Brewster
• Narrated By Elizabeth Wells

A crowdsourced mapping startup is using computer-vision technology to turn user-submitted photographs into a searchable, 3-D map of the world.

Happily Ever after in the Real World: The Roadmap for a Fulfilling Relationship Nothing Beats Experience!

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 22 mins)
• By Anne Benissan
• Narrated By Anne Benissan
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Anne Benissan has been walking the road she preaches. She has been in a happy relationship with the same man for over 18 years. Anne is only interested in results. Her goal is not to improve your relationship for a day or two, it is for you to love and thrive in your relationship in the long run. Her perspective is new, creative, and efficient. Chapter after chapter, listeners will learn what simple steps can be taken to dramatically improve their own relationship. Listeners will love the fact that the business of their daily lives has not been ignored...

How Google Maps Could Help Settle the Afghanistan-Pakistan Border Dispute

• ORIGINAL (6 mins)
• By Amulya Shankar
• Narrated By Marco Werman

Whether it's a solid line or a dotted line, it's all politics.

On the Map

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 43 mins)
• By Simon Garfield
• Narrated By Simon Shepherd

Maps fascinate us. They chart our understanding of the world and they log our progress, but above all they tell our stories. From the early sketches of philosophers and explorers through to Google Maps and beyond, Simon Garfield examines how maps both relate and realign our history. His compelling narratives range from the quest to create the perfect globe to the challenges of mapping Africa and Antarctica, from spellbinding treasure maps to the naming of America, from Ordnance Survey to the mapping of Monopoly and Skyrim and from rare map dealers to cartographic frauds.

God's Roadmap to Peace: Find Lasting Peace in a World of Conflict

• UNABRIDGED (6 hrs and 9 mins)
• By Lisa Gibson
• Narrated By Dickie Thomas
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

This audiobook challenges the notion that true peace is attainable absent anything short of a spiritual revolution. This book is designed to give you a fresh perspective on the historical and timeless origins of peace and help you find the path to true and lasting peace that you deeply long for.

The Great Race: The Race Between the English and the French to Complete the Map of Australia

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 33 mins)
• By David Hill
• Narrated By Paul English

On the afternoon of 8 April 1802, in the remote southern ocean, two explorers had a remarkable chance encounter. Englishman Matthew Flinders and Frenchman Nicolas Baudin had been sent by their governments on the same quest: to explore the uncharted coast of the great south land and find out whether the west and east coasts, four thousand kilometres apart, were part of the same island. And so began the race to compile the definitive map of Australia.

Weight Loss Resolution Roadmap: Weight Loss Resolutions Made Easy and Achievable

• UNABRIDGED (1 hr and 37 mins)
• By Philip Smith
• Narrated By Studio 73 Productions
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

Have you ever made a New Year's resolution to lose weight and get fit, and not followed through? Don't feel bad if you have; in fact, nearly all New Year's fitness resolutions to get in great shape get abandoned not long after they are begun. I should know. I've certainly been there and experienced the same sense of letdown myself. The good news is that it doesn't have to be that way. Follow the ideas in this guide and take action to implement them, and this can be the year that sees a new you - an ideal lean and healthy you - emerge.

The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past

• UNABRIDGED (6 hrs and 16 mins)
• By John Lewis Gaddis
• Narrated By Jack Chekijian
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What is history, and why should we study it? Is there such a thing as historical truth? Is history a science? One of the most accomplished historians at work today, John Lewis Gaddis, answers these and other questions in this short, witty, and humane book. The Landscape of History provides a searching look at the historian's craft as well as a strong argument for why a historical consciousness should matter to us today.

The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate

• UNABRIDGED (13 hrs and 29 mins)
• By Robert D. Kaplan
• Narrated By Michael Prichard
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

In The Revenge of Geography, Robert D. Kaplan builds on the insights, discoveries, and theories of great geographers and geopolitical thinkers of the near and distant past to look back at critical pivots in history and then to look forward at the evolving global scene. Kaplan traces the history of the world's hot spots by examining their climates, topographies, and proximities to other embattled lands.