Every map of the world that you have ever seen is inaccurate. Well, of course, you might think. How could they map out the world when it’s round, not flat? True. But that isn’t the point.

Flat, two-dimensional maps can look different because the world is actually curved. This means map-makers need to make compromises when drawing maps. These different map representations are called ...

Oxford University Press recently published "The Oxford Map Companion: One Hundred Sources in World History," edited by UC Irvine historian Patricia Seed. It's more than 200 pages of maps along ...