Longlisted for the 2025 BSHS Hughes Prize

'Ingenious. Caputo picks out a fascinating path and leads readers along it with the confidence of a practised pilot' Felipe Fernández-Armesto, author of 1492

'Accessible and entertaining, as well as deeply erudite and constantly mind-expanding' Philip Ball, author of How Life Works

From their first appearance on Renaissance maps, linear tracks representing maritime voyages have shaped the way we see the world. But why do we depict journeys as lines, and what is their deeper meaning? Ferdinand Magellan's route to the Pacific embodied the promise of adventure and colonisation, while the scientific charts of the Royal Navy inspired others to plan conquests, navigate treacherous waters and establish settlements across the oceans.

In Tracks on the Ocean, prize-winning historian Sara Caputo charts a hidden history of the modern world through the tracks left on maps and the sea. Taking us from ancient Greek itineraries to twenty-first-century digital mapping, via the voyages of Drake and Cook, the decks of Napoleonic warships and the boiler rooms of ocean liners, Caputo reveals how marks on maps have changed the course of modernity.

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.

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.