Alex Burghart

Atlas shrugs

Three new atlases of strange, improbable places show that, even with GPS, islands have a weird habit of appearing and disappearing

issue 26 November 2016

  • The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps

    Edward Brooke-Hitching

    Simon & Schuster, pp. 256

  • Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders

    Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras and Ella Morton

    Workman Publishing, pp. 480

  • Atlas of Improbable Places: A Journey to the World’s Most Unusual Places

    Travis Elborough

    Aurum, pp. 224

In his Forward Prize-winning collection of 2014, A Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion, Kei Miller’s hero describes his craft thus: ‘My job is to imagine the widening/ of the unfamiliar and also/ the widening ache of it;/ to anticipate the ironic/ question: how did we find/ ourselves here.’

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