Tracks on the Ocean: A History of Trailblazing, Maps and Maritime Travel

Sara Caputo

Longlisted for the 2025 BSHS Hughes Prize

'Enthralling' Philip Ball
'Ingenious' Sujit Sivasundaram

In Tracks on the Ocean, Sara Caputo tells how our journeys around the globe became fixed lines on maps - and how journey lines themselves reshaped maps and the way that we view the world. From Captain Cook's route across the South Seas to the disorientating power of digital technology, the tracks we've left on the oceans - trading, exploring and conquering - are a hidden record of humanity's impact on the planet. Revealing their histories, Caputo uncovers a fascinating new history of maritime travel and modernity.

Weaving human history, cartography, literature and climate science, Tracks on the Ocean reveals how, on the path to discovery, we have changed the world.