BOOKS & REVIEWS
 Jump to Book Reviews
RECENT BOOKS
The following are provided courtesy of Julie Sweetkind-Singer, Head Librarian, GIS & Map Librarian, Branner Earth Sciences Library & Map Collections, Stanford University.
The Kandik Map
| By Linda Johnson |
Fairbanks : University of Alaska Press, 2009 |
ISBN: 978-1-60223-032-3 |
Cost: $34.95 (Available from amazon.com.) |
“In 1880, a Native American named Paul Kandik and a French explorer, François Mercier, traveled across northeastern Alaska and western Canada to create the earliest known map of the region.” (from book cover) The original map is held at the Bancroft Library and UC Berkeley. The author draws on historical letters, geographical analysis, and the map itself in her study of the map and its makers.
Carte per Navigare: La raccolta di portolani della Biblioteca Palatina di Parma
| Edited by MUP: Monte Universita Parma |
Parma : Mirabilia Palatina, 2009. |
ISBN: 978-88-7847-264-8 |
Cost: 30 Euros from http://www.mupeditore.it/arte/cataloghi_arte/carte_per_navigare.aspx |
A beautiful book published to coincide with the exhibit at the Biblioteca Palatina di Parma. The book is in Italian with color pictures of their portolan charts dating from the early 1600s.
A beautifully illustrated oversized full color book highlighting maps of Istanbul for 500 years, including text in English and Turkish.
X Marks the Spot: Women Writers Map the Empire for British Children, 1790-1895
|
By Megan A. Norcia |
Athens, OH : Ohio University Press |
ISBN: 978-0-8214-1907-6 |
Cost: $50.00 (Available from amazon.com) |
Dr. Norcia writes about the geography primers of the 19th century in Britain, which were middle-class women. She “offers an alternative method for mapping the landscape of nineteenth-century female history by reintroducing the primers into the dominant historical record.”
Paris Underground: The Maps, Stations, and Design of the Metro
|
By Mark Ovenden |
New York : Penguin Books |
ISBN: 978-0-14-311639-4 |
Cost: $25.00 (Available from amazon.com) |
This soft cover book has over 1,000 full-color maps, diagrams and photographs that detail the history of the subway system in Paris. A must for a Francophile!
Mapping New York
edited by Phoebe Adler, Tom Howells and Duncan McCorquodale
London : Black Dog Pub., c2009.
ISBN: 9781906155827
Cost: $49.95 (Available from amazon.com.)
Mapping New York includes maps dating from the 16th century to the present and are arranged thematically including information on the population, military history, transport, commerce and crime in the city.
The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map that gave America its Name
by Toby Lester
New York: Free Press, 2009.
ISBN: 9781416535317
Cost: $30.00 (Available from amazon.com.)
Amazon.com has a long review of this book by Simon Winchester. He calls this “quite a wonderful book” that describes America’s “birth-certificate.” He goes on to state that, “The document is a map--and so Mr. Lester's book is in essence about cartography, and sixteenth century cartography at that, a specialist's dream. But the tale of the making and then the hiding and the losing and the finding of this extraordinary and very large document--it called the Waldseemüller Map, and it now belongs to the Library of Congress--is sufficiently exciting to be almost unbearably thrilling. And anyone who can make cartography thrill deserves a medal, at the very least.”
Mapping New Jersey: an Evolving Landscape
Cartography by Michael Siegel, edited by Maxine N. Lurie and Peter O. Wacker.
New Brunswick, N.J. : Rivergate Books, c2009.
ISBN: 9780813545851
Cost: $39.95 (Available from amazon.com.)
It has been nearly 100 years since the last atlas was published about the state of New Jersey. The book is divided into chapters by subject and includes a large number of interesting historical maps as well as current maps highlighting demographic and physical geography information.
The Imperial Map: Cartography and the Mastery of Empire
Edited by James R. Akerman
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Series: The Kenneth Nebenzahl, Jr., lectures in the history of cartography
ISBN: 9780226010762
Cost: $47.60 (Available from amazon.com.)
From Amazon.com: “Critically reflecting on elements of mapping and imperialism from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth century, the essays discuss the nature of the imperial map through a series of case studies of empires, from the Qing dynasty of China, to the Portuguese empire in South America, to American imperial pretensions in the Pacific Ocean, among others. Collectively, the essays reveal that the relationship between mapping and imperialism, as well as the practice of political and economic domination of weak polities by stronger ones, is a rich and complex historical theme that continues to resonate in our modern day.”
Maps in Those Days: Cartographic Methods before 1850
By J.H. Andrews
Dublin, Ireland; Four Courts, c2009.
ISBN: 9781846821882
Cost: $85.00 (Available from Four Courts Press.)
From the Four Courts Press website: “For some years the emphasis in map-historical literature has been either on traditional cartobibliography or on various cultural, social and ideological aspects of the mapping process. By contrast, few recent books have described what early cartographers actually did. Maps in Those Days addresses this question.”
Longitude by Wire: Finding North America
By Richard Stachurski
Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, c2009.
ISBN: 1570038015
Cost: $29.95 (Available from amazon.com.)
From amazon.com: “In Longitude by Wire, Richard Stachurski chronicles the amazing tale of discoveries made by American scientists as they worked to solve [the] life-threatening quandary … of measuring longitude. Stachurski recounts how the successful coupling of precision chronometers with the new electrical technology represented by Samuel Morse's telegraph produced the long-sought solution to the longitude problem.
Cartographic Encounters: Indigenous Peoples and the Exploration of the New World
By John Rennie Short
London, UK: Reaktion Books, 2009.
ISBN: 1861894368
Cost: $45.00 (Available from amazon.com)
From amazon.com: “In this vital reinterpretation of American history, Short describes how previous accounts of the mapping of the new world have largely ignored the fundamental role played by local, indigenous guides. The exchange of information that resulted from this “cartographic encounter” allowed the Native Americans to draw upon their wide knowledge of the land in the hope of gaining a better position among the settlers. This account offers a radical new understanding of Western expansion and the mapping of the land and will be essential to scholars in cartography and American history.”
Courtiers and Cannibals, Angels and Amazons: the Art of the Decorative Cartographic Titlepage
By Rodney Shirley
Houten, Netherlands: Hes & De Graaf, c2009.
ISBN: 9061940605
Cost: $88.00 (Available from Hes & de Graaf Publishers.)
From the HDG Web site: “This book aims to preserve and bring forward for wider appreciation the outstanding works of art that many engraved title pages and frontispieces represent. Over the time period covered by the present publication - roughly from the 1470s to the 1870s - very many printed books opened with an attractive decorative title page or frontispiece; sometimes both.”
BOOK REVIEWS
Courtesy of Society members and from the Society's newsletter.
DECEMBER 2009
Planisferio o Carta General de la Tierra, Madrid 1800, W. Michael Mathes, Ediciones Jose Porrua Turanzas, Madrid, 2009, in Spanish. REVIEW
MAY 2009
The Fabric of America, Andro Linklater, Walker & Company 2007, ISBN 10082715338, Paperback, available new from Amazon for $10.87. REVIEW DECEMBER 2008
Transit Maps of the World, the World’s First Collection of Every Urban Train Map on Earthby Mark Ovenden, Second Edition, 2007, Penguin Books, paperback, 144 pages all in color, $25.00 list (Amazon, $16.50). REVIEW Maps & Civilization, Cartography in Culture and Society, Third Edition, by Norman J. W. Thrower, University of Chicago Press, 2008, paperback, 352 pages incl. Notes, definitions, references, $25.00 everywhere. REVIEW
OCTOBER 2008
The Island at the Center of the World,Russell Shorto, Doubleday, 2004, 384 pp, ISBN 0385503490, $18.70 Amazon.com REVIEW
JULY 2008
Savage Kingdom: The True Story of Jamestown, 1607, and the Settlement of America, Benjamin Woolley, Harper Collins Publishers (2007), ISBN 978-0-06-00956-2, paperback. List price $16.95. REVIEW
APRIL 2008
Drawing the Line, Mark Monmonier, Henry Holt and Company, 1995,
ISBN 0805025812 (available used from Amazon for as little as $2.00) REVIEW
DECEMBER 2007
Historical Atlas of California with Original Maps by Derek Hayes, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2007, ISBN 978-0-520-25258-5, cloth:alk. paper, dust jacket, 256 pages, incl. Catalog of Maps, bibliography, index, 476 maps, all in color, 13 x 10 inches, list price $39.95, Amazon $26.37 REVIEW Star Maps, History, Artistry, and Cartography, by Nick Kanas, M.D., Springer-Praxis Books, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, ISBN 978-0-387-71668-8, paperback, 382 pp. incl. appendices, index, b&w and color illustrations, list $34.95, Amazon $23.07. REVIEW
SEPTEMBER 2007
The Mapmakers’ Quest, David Buisseret, Oxford University Press, 2003, 227 pp, ISBN 019210053X, $24.50 Amazon.com REVIEW Mapping and Empire: Soldier-Engineers on the Southwestern Frontier, Edited by Dennis Reinhartz and Gerald D. Saxon, University of Texas Press 2005, ISBN 0292706596, $33.20 Amazon.com. REVIEW
MAY 2007
The Mapping of North America, by Philip D. Burden, Raleigh Publications, Rickmansworth, Herts, England, 1996, ISBN 0 9527733 0 9. A Cartobibliography of 410 maps of the Americas from the untitled map of Peter Martyr d’Anghiera, Seville, 1511 through Pietro Todeschi’s America noviter delineate…., Bologna, c.1670. A work of 568 pages, each map is described with a legible size illustration. This is meant to be a complete listing of all known printed maps now in existence. REVIEW Atlas Maior of 1665, “The Greatest and Finest Atlas ever Published”, by Joan Blaeu, Taschen, Barnes & Noble, New York, Sept. 2006, 416 pages, introduction and text by Peter van der Krogt, ISBN 0760782067, on sale at BarnesandNoble.com for $24.98 plus shipping. REVIEW
MARCH 2007
Cuatro Siglos de Expresiones Geograficas del Ostmo Centroamericano. Four Centuries of Geographic Expressions of the Central American Isthmus, 1500-1900. Jens P. Bornholt, 2007, Universidad Francisco Marroqui, Guatemala, ISBN 99922-799-5-8, hard cover, 205 pp, maps, foldouts, biographies, glossary, bibliography, $80 US, not yet available on Amazon. REVIEW DECEMBER 2003
Representing the Republic, by John Rennie Short, Reaktion Books Ltd., 2001, ISBN 1861890869,256 pages, $24.50 REVIEW
SEPTEMBER 2003
Changing Faces, Changing Places: Mapping Southern Californians, by James P. Allen and Eugene Turner, The Center for Geographical Studies, CSUN, 2002, ISBN 0965696626 (pbk.), 60 pages, $24.95 REVIEW
Degrees of Latitude: Mapping Colonial America, by Margaret Beck Pritchard and Henry G. Taliaferro, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2002, ISBN 0810935392, 434 pages with 283 illustrations (including 159 plates in full color), $95. REVIEW
The True Story of How America Got Its Name, by Rodney Broome, MJF Books, 2001, ISBN 1567315453, 188 pages, $7.95. REVIEW
JUNE 2003
A Wilderness So Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America,by Jon Kukla, Alfred A Knopf, 2003, 430 pages with illustrations, maps and treaty texts, $30. REVIEW
Measuring America, by Andro Linklater, Walker & Co., 2002, ISBN0802713963, 320 pages. REVIEW
Mercator: The Man Who Mapped The Planet, by Nicholas Crane, Henry Holt & Co., 2003, ISBN 0805066241, 320 pages. REVIEW
The Mismapping of America, by Seymour I. Schwartz, University of Rochester Press, 2003, ISBN 1-58046-129-8, 233 pages. REVIEW
Tracks in the Sea: Matthew Fontaine Maury and the Mapping of the Oceans,by Chester G. Hearn, McGraw Hill, 2002, ISBN0071368264, 288 pages REVIEW
DECEMBER 2002
Mapping The West, America’s Westward Movement 1524-1890, by Paul E. Cohen with introduction by David Rumsey, Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., New York, 2002, ISBN 0-8478-2492-6, 205 pages with bibliography, prints, and maps in full color, $50 REVIEW |
|
|
