BOOKS & REVIEWS

Branner LibraryJump to Book Reviews

RECENT BOOKS

The following are provided courtesy of Julie Sweetkind-Singer, Assistant Director of Geospatial, Cartographic and Scientific Data & Services; Head Librarian, Branner Earth Sciences Library & Map Collections, Stanford University.

 

Korea: A Cartographic History
By John Rennie Short
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-226-75364-5
Cost: $45.00 on amazon.com

The book, with full color depictions of the maps, covers the span of Korean cartography from about 1400 to the present.  Short discusses maps made by Koreans and by non-Koreans.  The book is chronologically organized and highlights the influence of China, Japan and the rest of the world on Korean cartography.  There is an interesting chapter at the end about the controversies surrounding the naming of the East Sea/Sea of Japan and the island of Dokdo.

 

On the Edge: Mapping North America’s Coast
By Roger McCoy
Oxford University Press, 2012
ISBN: 978-0199744046
Cost: $29.95 on amazon.com

According to Amazon, On the Edge “tells the captivating--and often harrowing--story of the 400 year effort to map North America's Coasts. Much of the book is based on the narratives of mariners who sought a passage through the continent to Asia and produced maps as a byproduct of their journeys. … On the Edge tracks the dramatic voyages of John Cabot, John Davis, Captain Cook, Henry Hudson, Martin Frobisher, John Franklin (who nearly starved to death and become known in England as "the man who ate his boots"), and others, concluding with Robert Peary, Otto Sverdrup, and Vihjalmur Steffanson in the early twentieth century.”

 

Japoniae Insvlae: The Mapping of Japan (Historical introduction and cartobibliography of European printed maps of Japan to 1800)
By Jason C. Hubbard
Houten, Netherlands: Hes & De Graff Publishers, 2012
ISBN: 978-90-6194-531-4
Cost: $265.00 from amazon.com, which says it is not released as of 1/25/2013 although it has been.  Available from abebooks.com

This oversized book is in full color and includes topics such as: early European mapping of Japan; imaginary maps; transitional maps; the dawn of modern maps;  European mapping in the 17th and 18th century; nautical charts; pirated maps, counterfeit maps; indigenous mapmaking; early Japanese mapmaking to the 17th and 18th centuries.

 

London: A History in Maps
By Peter Barber
London: London Topographical Society, 2012
ISBN: 978-0712358798
Cost: $45.00 on amazon.com

Tony Barber, head of the maps and topographical views at the British Library has produced an impressive book detailing the history of London in maps.  The images are in full color throughout and cover the timespan from 50 AD through modern times.  A must have for Anglophiles such as myself!

 

Round about the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit
By Joyce E Chaplin
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4165-9619-6
Cost: $35.00 on amazon.com, $16.99 for the e-book

Joyce Chaplin is an Early American History professor at Harvard and regularly writes about science including books on Ben Franklin and science on the Anglo-American frontier.  Here she looks at the 500 year history of the ways in which people and animals have circled the Earth.  The book includes a few map reproductions in black and white.

 

Mission Possible: A Neighborhood Atlas

CAGE Lab Collaboration
Darin Jensen, Editor

“Mission Possible: A Neighborhood Atlas is the product of a collaboration with Mission Loc@l and a project in experiential learning by students in the Cartography and GIS Education (CAGE) Lab at UC Berkeley’s Geography Department.  Students examined and mapped phenomena of the Mission in an effort to look at the neighborhood from different viewpoints and to offer users useful information.  The maps in this atlas are products of students’ work and imagination.” (from their website)

This is a great neighborhood atlas and one worth exploring.  You can view the whole thing for free at http://missionpossiblesf.org/ .  You may also purchase the atlas for your collection from the same site.

 

Mapping Europe’s Borderlands: Russian Cartography in the Age of Empire

By Steven Seegel
Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2012
ISBN:  978-0-226-74425-4
Cost: $55 on amazon.com (or less)

“Drawing from sources in eleven languages, including military, historical-pedagogical, and ethnographic maps, as well as geographic texts and related cartographic literature, Seegel explores the role of maps and mapmakers in the East Central European borderlands from the Enlightenment to the Treaty of Versailles.” (from the dust jacket)

 

Mapping Greece, 1420-1800, A History: Maps in the Margarita Samourkas CollectionBy Giorgos Tolias

By Giorgos Tolias
New Castle, DE : Oak Knoll Press, 2011
ISBN:  978-1-58456-302-0
Cost: $250.00 on amazon.com

This is an impressive book on the mapping of Greece.  The book is 545 pages long complete with essays and full color reproductions of the maps from the Margarita Samourkas Collection.  It includes a catalogue of all of the maps in the collection.  A must have for people interested in this topic.

 

Mapping the Nation: History and Cartography in Nineteenth-Century America

By Susan Schulten
Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2012
ISBN:  978-0226740683
Cost: $45.00 (or less) on amazon.com

“In the nineteenth century, Americans began to use maps in radically new ways. For the first time, medical men mapped diseases to understand and prevent epidemics, natural scientists mapped climate and rainfall to uncover weather patterns, educators mapped the past to foster national loyalty among students, and Northerners mapped slavery to assess the power of the South. After the Civil War, federal agencies embraced statistical and thematic mapping in order to profile the ethnic, racial, economic, moral, and physical attributes of a reunified nation. By the end of the century, Congress had authorized a national archive of maps, an explicit recognition that old maps were not relics to be discarded but unique records of the nation’s past.

All of these experiments involved the realization that maps were not just illustrations of data, but visual tools that were uniquely equipped to convey complex ideas and information. In Mapping the Nation, Susan Schulten charts how maps of epidemic disease, slavery, census statistics, the environment, and the past demonstrated the analytical potential of cartography, and in the process transformed the very meaning of a map.” (From Amazon website)

 

Early American Cartographies

Edited by Martin Brückner
University of North Carolina Press, 2011
ISBN:  978-0-8078-3469-5
Cost: $60 on amazon.com

“Maps were at the heart of cultural life in the Americas from before colonization to the formation of modern nation-states. The fourteen essays in Early American Cartographies examine indigenous and European peoples' creation and use of maps to better represent and understand the world they inhabited.  The individual essays, then, range widely over space and place, from the imperial reach of Iberian and British cartography to indigenous conceptualizations, including "dirty," ephemeral maps and star charts, to demonstrate that pre-nineteenth-century American cartography was at once a multiform and multicultural affair.” From Amazon’s website.

Cartografía Hispánica: Imagen de un Mundo en Crecimiento, 1503-1810

By Marino Cuesta Domingo
Madrid : Ministerio de Defensa, 2010
ISBN:  978-84-9781-593-2

The book is entirely in Spanish with color photographs.  Chapter titles are listed here: http://www.portalcultura.mde.es/publicaciones/publicaciones/Geografia/publicacion_0100.html .  The book may also be ordered through this website.

Historical Atlas of Washington and Oregon

By Derek Hayes
Berkeley : University of California Press, 2011
ISBN:  978-0-520-26615-5
Cost: $39.95 on amazon (or less)

Derek Hayes has written another book in his “Historical Atlas” series.  The book is oversized and in full color with many pictures and map reproductions.  The maps date from the early 1800’s to new releases detailing the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980.

Los Angeles in Maps

By Glen Creason
New York : Rizzoli, 2010
ISBN:  978-0-8478-3391-7
Cost: $50 (or less) on amazon.com

Glen Creason, the Map Librarian at Los Angeles Public Library and member of CMS, has written and beautifully illustrated a cartographic history of Los Angeles.  Contributions from other luminaries, such as our own Bill Warren, add to the essays that describe each piece.  The  maps are in full color and cover the period from 1860 up until 2010.  A must have book for anyone interested in the mapping of this region. Also see review.

Disease Maps: Epidemics on the Ground

By Tom Koch
Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2011
ISBN:  978-0-226-44935-7
Cost: $45

“Where will this year’s incarnation of H1N1 strike? And will flu shots and hand washing be enough to fend it off? Thankfully, Tom Koch’s Disease Maps is here to shed light on the subject of epidemics both historic and contemporary. In it, he contends that to understand epidemics and their history we need to think about maps of varying scale, from the individual body to shared symptoms evidenced across cities, nations, and the world.”  (From the Publisher’s Website: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/news/2011/May/1105kochprs.html)

Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey

By Rachel Hewitt
London : Granta, 2010
ISBN:  978-1-84708-098-1
Cost: $17.50 used from Amazon.com

“Map of a Nation tells the story of the creation of the Ordnance Survey map - the first complete, accurate, affordable map of the British Isles. The Ordnance Survey is a much beloved British institution, and Map of a Nation is, amazingly, the first popular history to tell the story of the map and the men who dreamt and delivered it.” (From the Publisher’s Website: http://grantabooks.com/page/3032/Map-Of-A-Nation/1511)

Everything Sings: Maps for a Narrative Atlas

By Denis Wood
Los Angeles : Siglio, 2010
ISBN:  978-0-9799562-4-9
Cost: $28.00

This is an interesting book if you are curious about alternative, conceptual forms of mapping.  As the publisher states: “Denis Wood has created an atlas unlike any other. Surveying Boylan Heights, his small neighborhood in North Carolina, he subverts the traditional notions of mapmaking to discover new ways of seeing both this place in particular and the nature of place itself. Each map attunes the eye to the invisible, the overlooked, and the seemingly insignificant.”  (From the Publisher’s Website: http://sigliopress.com/books/atlas.htm)

Railway Maps of the World

By Mark Ovenden
New York : Viking, 2011
ISBN:  978-0-670-02265-6
Cost: $35.00

With pages of full color images and maps, Mark Ovenden highlights contemporary and historical maps and posters of railway lines from around the world.  This is a follow-up to his “Transit Maps of the World” published in 2007.

Manuscript and Annotated Maps in the American Geographical Society Library: A Cartobibliography

Complied by Jovanka Ristić
Milwaukee : University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2010
ISBN:  1-879281-27-9
Cost: $15.00

“The book offers descriptive entries on over 300 maps in AGSL that were drawn by hand, many of them extremely rare, beginning with its oldest example, the 1452 “Map of the World’” by Venetian cartographer Giovanni Leardo. The Cartobibliography also has entries on AGSL’s  printed maps with manuscript annotations, including nautical charts notated by Charles Lindbergh as he planned the first trans-Atlantic flight.” (From the Publisher’s Website: http://www4.uwm.edu/libraries/AGSL/publ.cfm)

The Finest Illustrated Maps of Hungary: 1528-1895

By Katalin Plihál
Hungary : Kossuth Publishing, 2009
ISBN: 978-963-09-6047-2

This book features maps from the National Széchényi Library in Hungary.  The oldest map is from 1528 and continues through the centuries up to 2007.  In full color and in English.  More information may be found here: http://www.kossuth.hu/index.php?o=konyvek&k=1503 .

Ships on Maps : Pictures of Power in Renaissance Europe

By Richard W. Unger
Houndmills, England : Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
ISBN:  978-0-230-23164-1
Cost: $80 (or less) on amazon.com

Ships were rare sights on maps prior to 1375.  After that time, they grew in abundance up through the sixteenth century.  Unger investigates how, “the many ships that came to decorate maps in the age when sailors began to sail around the world were an integral part of the information summarizing a new age.”  This hardbound book has black and white illustrations as well as a section of eight color plates.

Northward Bound - At the Far Edge of the World

By Benedict Gamborg Brisa
Norway : Nordkappmuseet, 2010.
ISBN: 978-82-90700-13-8
Unable to find a source for this item.

This booklet was published in conjunction with the map exhibition of the same name at the North Cape Museum in Norway during the summer and autumn of 2010.  Printed in English with full color reproductions, the maps focus on the Nordic and Arctic regions covering the time period between the Middle Ages and the mid 1700’s.

Covens & Mortier : A Map Publishing House in Amsterdam, 1685-1866

By Dr. Marco van Egmond
Houten, Netherlands : HES & De Graaf, 2009.
ISBN: 978-90-6194-220-7
Cost: $395.00 on amazon.com

This book has been published as part of the Utrecht Studies in the History of Cartography, Volume 8.  It is based on a Dutch language dissertation by the same author published in 2005.  In addition to the original dissertation, Dr. van Egmond has added several hundred illustrations and a carto-bibliography with original and compiled maps by Covens & Mortier.  The book includes full color illustrations throughout and includes a detailed history of this publishing house.  Truly an impressive work.

Mapping America : Exploring the Continent

By Frtiz Kessler
London: Black Dog Publishing, 2010.
ISBN: 978-1907317088
Cost: $45.00 or less on amazon.com

An interesting book that has full color depictions of the United States which are artistic, interpretive, and theoretical.  The maps span four centuries of depictions of America and including everything from the Civil War, the Civil Rights movement, environmentalism and terrorism.

La carta de Gabriel de Vallseca de 1439

By Ramon J. Pujades I Bataller
Barcelona: Lumen Artis Ediciones, 2009.
ISBN: 978-84-612-3682-4
Unable to find a source for this item.

This book delves into the oldest known Portolan Chart by the Majorcan cartographer, Gabriel de Vallseca.   As is noted on the Lumen Artis web site, the information it contains reflects the knowledge of the period with regard to physical, biological and political geography.  The book includes full color pictures and a complete translation of the text in English.  It is accompanied by a reproduction of the chart.  950 copies have been printed.  Find out more here: http://www.lumenartis.net/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=68&products_id=183&language=en

Capitanata in Carta : La Rappresentazione del Territorio dal XIV al XX Secolo

By Antonio Ventura
Foggia : Claudio Grenzi Editore, 2010.
ISBN:  978-88-8431-379-9
Cost: 26 Euros from the publisher at http://www.claudiogrenzi.it/scheda_libro.asp?id_libro=656

This softbound full-color book traces the history of the Capitanata region in Italy near the city of Foggia through cartographic depictions, bird’s eye views and drawings of notable buildings in the area.  The book is in Italian and includes descriptions of all of the items as well as essays.

A History of Arctic Exploration: Discovery, Adventure and Endurance at the Top of the World

By Matti Lainema and Juha Nurminen
London : Conway, 2009.
ISBN: 978-1-84486-069-2
Cost: $60 (or less) on amazon.com

This book was originally published in 2001 as Ultima Thule by the John Nurminen Foundation.  Juha Nurminen states in the introduction that “This volume is an account of the most essential and the most exciting aspects of mapping the Arctic areas from antiquity right through to the opening of the Northwest and Northeast Passages and the conquering of the North Pole.”  His interest is in the mapping of the region while his co-author collects travel narratives.  Together they have produced a beautiful coffee table book in full color full of maps, photographs, paintings and information about the extreme north.  A must for anyone interested in this region.

Atlas du Vanouatou (Vanuatu)

By Patricia Siméoni
Port-Vila, Vanouatou : Éditions Géo-Consulte, 2009.
ISBN: 978-2-9533362-0-7
Cost: $211.00 on abebooks.com

Published in French, this atlas covers the region that is the archipelago of Vanouatou.  The atlas includes information about the cultural and the physical aspects of the islands.

Historical Atlas of the North American Railroad

By Derek Hayes
Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-520-26616-2
Cost: $40.00 or less (Available from amazon.com)

Derek Hayes’s current book covers the history of the North American railroad.  Lavishly illustrated with maps, he discusses the origins of the railroad, its growth from a series of local lines to a transcontinental network through to the present state of the railroad system today.

De Polderatlas van Nederland

By Clemens Steenbergen, et al.
Bussum, Netherlands : Thoth, 2009.
ISBN: 978-90-6868-509-1

Wikipedia describes a polder as a “low-lying tract of land enclosed by embankments known as dikes.”  There are three types of polders, those lands reclaimed from a body of water, flood planes separated from the sea or river or marshes separated from the surrounding water.  The Dutch have a long history of land manipulation and reportedly have over 3,000 polders nationwide.  This impressive atlas exhaustively details this process using GIS, photographs, maps and satellite imagery.  The book is in Dutch.

Atlas Nacional de la República de Panamá

By Ministerio de Obras Públicas
Panama : Instituto Geográfico Nacional “Tommy Guardia”, 2007.
ISBN: 978-9962-8865-2-5

This is the 4th edition of the National Atlas of Panama.  This up to date atlas uses GIS to depict information such as health conditions, boundaries, maritime zones, population, agriculture, industry, education, etc.  The book is published in Spanish.

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.

Maps of Istanbul: Haritalari 1422-1922

By Ayse Yetiskin Kubilay

Istanbul : Denizler Kitabevi

ISBN: 978-9944-264-19-8

Cost: 160 Euros from Zero Books Online http://www.zerobooksonline.com/eng/product_details.asp?cat=1&subcat=10&product=4359

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                                                                                                          (back to top)

 Courtesy of Society members and from the Society's newsletter. 

DECEMBER 2011     

Maphead, Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks, Ken Jennings, Scribners, 2011, hardcover, 276 pages, index, notes, list $25.00, Amazon approx. $15.00. REVIEW

Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, Rebecca Solnit, Berkeley, Univ. of Calif. Press, 2010, 144 pp. ISBN 978-0-520-26250-8, heavy weight paperback, $24.95 list, Amazon $16.47, also available in hardcover.  REVIEW

SEPTEMBER 2011

Designed Maps: A Sourcebook for GIS Users, Cynthia A. Brewer, ESRI Press, Redlands, 2008, ISBN 978-1-58948-160-2, paperback, 184 pages, list $39.95, Amazon $20.03.   REVIEW

MAY 2011

Four Colors Suffice: How the Map Problem Was Solved, Robin Wilson, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2002, hardcover, ISBN 0-691-11533-8, list $24.95, Amazon $20.48 REVIEW

Strange Maps: an Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities, Frank Jacobs, Viking Studio, 2009, soft cover, ISBN 978-0-14-200525-5, list $30.00, Amazon $19.80 REVIEW

MARCH 2011

George Washington’s America: A Biography through his Maps, Barnet Schecter, Walker & Co., New York, 2010,
hardcover, 13-1/4” x 10-1/4”, ISBN 978-0-8027-1748-1. List $67.50, Amazon $33 REVIEW

DECEMBER 2010

Euskal Herria Museoa, Kartografia Bilduma • Colección Cartográfica • Collection Cartographique • The Map Collection, Diputación Foral de Bizkaia, 2010, Hardcover, 29 x29 cm + 1 CD. ISBN: 9788477524595, 35.00€.

REVIEW

Los Angeles in Maps, Glen Creason, Rizzoli International, New York, 2010, ISBN-13: 978-0-8478-3391-7, list $50, Amazon $31.05 REVIEW

Magnificent Maps, Power, Propaganda and Art, Peter Barber and Tom Harper, The British Library, 2010, ISBN 978 07123 5092 1, List $45, Amazon $35.64 REVIEW

SEPTEMBER 2010

Catálogo de catografía, cosmografía, náutica y navegación de la Biblioteca de la Sociedad Bilbaina, Sociedad Bilbaina, Bilbao, 2009, Hardbound, 269 Pages, text in Spanish. ISBN 978-84-613-3077-5. € 30

REVIEW

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