Gilbert H. Grosvenor, National Geographic magazine’s founding editor, is credited with saying: A map is the greatest of all epic poems. Its lines and colors show the realization of great dreams.

This map is stitched together not by algorithms ... That’s exactly what you’ll get when you order the FREE National Geographic Geotourism MapGuide to the Crown of the Continent.

8 min read This story appears in the September 2013 issue of National Geographic magazine. The maps here show the world ... we’ll very likely create an ice-free planet, with an average ...