"From Bronze Age mariners of the Mediterranean to modern sailors using satellite-based technologies, people have relied on navigation , the art of finding a position and setting a course at sea, for exploration, trade, warfare, and the expansion of influence and empire. [Here] ... Jim Bennett looks at the history of navigation, and the development of charts, techniques such as dead reckoning and instruments, such as astrolabes and sextants that became vital to seamen. He describes the final practical resolution of the problem of longitude and ends with the nature of navigation today."--Book flap.