'Witty and geekily eclectic' The TimesAn erudite and amusing exploration' Financial Times'Full of jawdropping facts' Mail on Sunday'Remarkable . . . engrossing' Sunday Times'A pleasure' Spectator'An infectiously enthusiastic history' Times Literary SupplementThe encyclopaedia once shaped our understanding of the world. Now these huge books sell for almost nothing on eBay while ...

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.With a historical sweep ranging from Ptolemy to Twitter, Garfield explores the legendary, impassable (and non-existent) mountains of Kong, the role of cartography in combatting cholera, the 17th-century ...

By the bestselling author of Just My Type: a "thoroughly enjoyable and illuminating" journey into the concept of time "stuffed with fascinating material" ( Observer, UK).Timekeepers is a book about our obsession with time and our desire to measure it, control it, sell it, film it, perform it, immortalize it and make it meaningful. In this fascinating, anecdotal exploration, award-winning author Simon Garfield has two simp...

A hugely entertaining and revealing guide to the history of type that asks, What does your favorite font say about you?Fonts surround us every day, on street signs and buildings, on movie posters and books, and on just about every product we buy. But where do fonts come from, and why do we need so many? Who is responsible for the staid practicality of Times New Roman, the cool anonymity of Arial, or the irritating levity of Comic Sans (and the movement to ban it)?

'A brilliant oral history of the golden age of British wrestling and magnificent wider social history.' Richard OsmanThe classic account of the men and women who used to fight each other for pride and money. Simon Garfield brings them to life in one last glorious bout of jealousy, myth, revenge, passion and deep devotion.When British wrestling was dropped from the ITV schedules in the mid-80s it left the giants of the ring - Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks, Kend...

Just My Type is not just a font book, but a book of stories. About how Helvetica and Comic Sans took over the world. About why Barack Obama opted for Gotham, while Amy Winehouse found her soul in 30s Art Deco. About the great originators of type, from Baskerville to Zapf, or people like Neville Brody who threw out the rulebook, or Margaret Calvert, who invented the motorway signs that are used from Watford Gap to Abu Dhabi. About the pivotal moment when fonts left the world of Let...

Cronometrados es una brillante exploración de las formas en que hemos percibido, contenido y ahorrado el tiempo a lo largo de los últimos 250 años, narrado en el estilo ingenioso y entretenido del maravilloso Simon Garfield.No hace mucho medíamos nuestras vidas por el movimiento del sol. Hoy la hora nos llega de todas partes con insistencia, y lo que impulsa nuestras vidas es la idea de que nunca vamos a tener suficiente de lo que más anhelamos: el tiempo....

“A fascinating, informative and highly entertaining expedition through the highways and byways of dogdom.” —John Bradshaw, New York Times bestselling author of Dog SenseA charming meditation on the relationship between humans and dogs, drawing upon history, science, art, and personal experience to illuminate a magical bond that has endured millennia—from the New York Times bestselling author of

¿Cuál es tu tipo? Una desenfadada introducción al mundo de la tipografía.Desde que las tipografías se mudaron a la barra de herramientas del ordenador todos comenzamos a tener una opinión sobre ellas. Hoy es imposible ignorar su poder, su omnipresencia en las marcas que nos rodean o el carácter que imprimen a nuestros textos. Y si no, ¿por qué despierta tantas antipatías el uso de Comic Sans? ¿A qué se debió el revuelo causado cuando Ikea fue infiel a Futura con Ve...

'Witty and geekily eclectic' The TimesAn erudite and amusing exploration' Financial Times'Full of jawdropping facts' Mail on Sunday'Remarkable . . . engrossing' Sunday Times'A pleasure' Spectator'An infectiously enthusiastic history' Times Literary SupplementThe encyclopaedia once shaped our un...

The New York Times bestselling author of Just My Type and On the Map offers an ode to letter writing and its possible salvation in the digital age.Few things are as exciting—and potentially life-changing—as discovering an old letter. And while etiquette books still extol the practice, letter writing seems to be disappearing amid a flurry of e-mails, texting, and tweeting. The recent decline in letter writing marks a cultural shift so vast...

Cartography enthusiasts rejoice: the bestselling author of Just My Type reveals the fascinating relationship between man and map.Simon Garfield’s Just My Type illuminated the world of fonts and made everyone take a stand on Comic Sans and care about kerning. Now Garfield takes on a subject even dearer to our fanatical human hearts: maps.Imagine a world without maps. How would we travel? Could we own land? What would men and women argue abo...