In The Spectator, Travis Elborough reviews Thomas Reinertsen Berg’s Theatre of the World: The Maps that Made World History (Hodder & Stoughton, 6 September). This is a translation (by Alison McCullough); the original book appeared in Norwegian as Verdensteater: Kartenes historie last year. Elborough, who is himself an author of map books,¹ calls the book “impressively global and touchingly parochial, as his native Norway and Scandinavia in general often and unashamedly take centre stage in the narrative. (A note in the foreword explains that the book has to a certain extent been de-Norwegianised for the English edition.)” But then he goes on to lament the omission of thoroughly British-centric content. Go figure.

Theatre of the World is out now in the U.K.; the U.S. edition, published by Little, Brown, and with its title thoroughly Americanized as Theater of the World, comes out on December 4th.

Related: Map Books of 2018.

1. Including 2016’s Atlas of Improbable Places (see previous entry) and the forthcoming Atlas of the Unexpected.