Four Points of the Compass
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  • Published: 5 September 2024
  • ISBN: 9780141999579
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 208

Four Points of the Compass

The Unexpected History of Direction

Formats & editions
Paperback
2 Dec 2025
Hardback
3 Dec 2024
EBook
5 Sep 2024
Audiobook
5 Sep 2024
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A sparkling exploration of the four cardinal directions, by the acclaimed author of A History of the World in 12 Maps

North, south, east and west: almost all societies use the four cardinal directions to orientate themselves, to understand who they are by projecting where they are. For millennia, these four directions have been the foundation of our navigation and exploration and are central to the imaginative, moral and political geography of virtually every culture in the world. Yet they are far more subjective and various – sometimes contradictory – than we might realize.

Four Points of the Compass takes the reader on a journey of directional discovery. Jerry Brotton reveals why Hebrew culture privileges east; why Renaissance Europeans began drawing north at the top of their maps; why early Islam revered the south; why the Aztecs used five colour-coded cardinal directions; and why no societies, primitive or modern, have ever orientated themselves westwards. He ends by reflecting on our digital age in which we, the little blue dot on the screen, have become the most important compass point. Throughout, Brotton shows that the directions reflect a human desire to create order and that they only have meaning, literally and metaphorically, depending on where you stand.
  • Published: 5 September 2024
  • ISBN: 9780141999579
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 208
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Also by Jerry Brotton

A History of the World in Twelve Maps
This Orient Isle
Great Maps
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Praise for Four Points of the Compass

A brilliant writer and historian

William Dalrymple

A unique and observant history ... well written, measured and precise ... points lucidly at where we have come from.

Chris Allnutt, Financial Times

Four Points of the Compass is breathless as well as breathtaking ... Brotton offers what might be framed as a history of the cultural politics of the cardinal directions [and] makes pertinent interventions in those politics ... fascinating titbits, provocations to thought and further inquiries abound ...

Robert Mayhew, Times Literary Supplement

Mr. Brotton’s evocative book investigates those shifting meanings, drawing from religion, history, literature and geopolitics to argue that north, south, east, and west now function more as loaded ideological terms than as navigational aids . . . He establishes that they remain potent in fascinating and surprising ways

Barbara Spindel, Wall Street Journal

Surprising, entertaining and original

Sathnam Sanghera, author of EMPIRELAND and EMPIREWORLD