«We manage to immerse ourselves in a universe which is a billion times bigger than us. It is a wondrous achievement and its history, well depicted in Tommaso Maccararo and Claudio Tartari’s book, ultimately coincides with the history if thought and science.»
Vincenzo Barone, Il sole 24 ore

«A fascinating story where philosophy and geography mix, along with measure of time and space».
Patrizia Caraveo, Il sole 24 ore

«In this book, dense and complex (…) Once finished reading, what is left is mostly the excitement of the intellectual challenge taken by humanity in the course of thousands of years (and with an extraordinary acceleration in recent times) and the beauty of theories recently developed by scientific research, giving shape to our “place”».
Mauro Capocci, Le Scienze

«A small but dense book about man’s interminable journey, eager to find out his place in the universe, a “place” not only in the topographical sense, but also a question about human existence, a “where am I” that leads to a “where am I going?”».
Piero Bianucci, La Stampa

★Rights sold in Spanish and simplified Chinese.
★The Chinese edision has been a bestseller for 3 years and has been selected as a recommended reading list for primary and secondary school students!
★The authoritative book on space cognition by Tommaso Maccacaro, director of the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics, together with the famous historian Claudio M. Tartari.

Since the very first time man began measuring the space around him, wonder never ceased. The question "Where are we?" looks like an easy one and yet the answer is anything but simple. The question is still open. Conclusions are always provisional, always questioned by new findings. The space gets bigger and bigger, the notion of "where" becomes broader. It is not just the Big Bang or the universe expanding: it is our perception of the space that broadened over time, becoming more and more complex and making us smaller and smaller, lost in a "where" now limitless.
In this short but dense and enjoyable book, Maccacaro and Tartari bring us from the fuzzy space of the valleys inhabited by Homo Erectus to the cosmogonic myths of ancient cultures, introducing us to the first representations of the world. Leafing through their book we will learn that the great Empires of the Bronze Age already created sophisticated conceptual maps, while the stars already helped travelers to find their way. Heavenly space constantly intersected with the space on earth, and in classical antiquity the space began to dilate. During the Middle Ages calculation and navigation tools became more refined. Eventually, the discovery of a new continent radically changed our notion of "where", and subsequent exploration rapidly filled with names the spaces previously left blank on ancient parchment maps. In the Modern Age, lenses made the sky bigger, leading to the discovery of new planets. Stars quickly turned into galaxies, while new theories literally reshaped the world. "Where" is now an elastic, time-related, limitless and ever changing concept.

Tommaso Maccaro (Pavia 1951) is an astrophysicist. He has done research in Italy, the UK and the US and has published more than 250 papers on major international journals. He has been head of committees within the ESO and the ES, as well as head of Brera's Osservatorio Astronomico and president of the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica. He has been recently writing on a number of popular journals and newspapers.
Claudio M. Tartari (Milano, 1951) graduated in Medieval History at the University of Milan. He has been chief librarian in a library with a historical-legal focus in Milan.