Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time

Michael Benson tells the thrilling story of the discovery and description of the universe in a new way. Selecting artful and profound illustrations and maps, many hidden away in the world’s great science libraries and virtually unknown today, he chronicles more than 1,000 years of humanity’s ever-expanding understanding of the size and shape of space itself. He shows how the invention of the telescope inspired visions of unimaginably distant places and explains why today we turn to supercomputer simulations to reveal deeper truths about space-time.

Cosmigraphics explores the visual side of our great­est imaginative achievement as a species: the unveiling of a vast universe that is largely invisible to our senses. It will be a revelation to space-struck Earthlings, art lovers, and readers interested in the history of science, the visualization of information, graphic design, and mapping.

Michael Benson's books for Abrams include Beyond, Far Out, and Planetfall. A photographer, writer, and filmmaker, in the last decade he has staged a series of increasingly large-scale exhibitions of planetary landscape photography. He lives in Boston and Ljubljana, Slovenia.