BOOKS & REVIEWS

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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.

 

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

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