Blogging about maps since 2003
Matthew Edney’s Cartography: The Ideal and Its History was published by the University of Chicago Press last April. I have a review copy and a review is in the works. While you’re waiting for me to get said review written, here are a couple of reviews to tide you over: one from Steven Seegel at … Continue reading “Reviews of Edney’s Cartography”
COVD-19 is hitting the United States very hard right now. This interactive map from the Harvard Global Health Institute measures COVID-19 risk at the county level. The four colour-coded risk levels are based on a seven-day rolling average of new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people: less than one means green (“on track for containment”); more … Continue reading “A County-by-County COVID-19 Map”
I believe that today is (nominally) the publication date of the fourth volume in the History of Cartography Project: The History of Cartography, Volume 4: Cartography in the European Enlightenment. As with other volumes of the project, it’s a massive piece of work: two physical volumes and nearly two thousand pages. Edited by Matthew H. … Continue reading “The History of Cartography’s Fourth Volume, Now (Almost) Out”
Kera Till’s “Commuting in Corona Times” is a transit map of the new normal. More at Untapped New York. On a personal level, the coronavirus map I stare at the most is the one closest to home: a dashboard that shows the regional incidence of COVID-19 in Quebec. Maintained by two geographers at Laval University, … Continue reading “Still More Coronavirus Maps”
Three books look at islands that never were.
Here are the books that, to my knowledge, have been published or are scheduled to be published in 2019. To suggest a book for this list, please contact me. If you are a publisher, author or publicist of one of these books and would like to send me a review copy, see the reviewing guidelines. Note that as an … Continue reading “Map Books of 2020”
Inspired by its appearance in a recent science fiction novel, Matthew Edney explores the history of the odd word “cartograph”—a back formation of “cartography” whose existence suggests circumstances in which “map” is somehow insufficient. Edney traces three kinds of uses of the term: one referring to an early 20th-century instrument; one as a synonym for pictorial … Continue reading “‘Cartograph’: History of a Back Formation”
Matthew H. Edney’s Cartography: The Ideal and Its History (University of Chicago Press, April) is a full-throated jeremiad against the concept of cartography itself—the ideal of cartography, which after 237 densely argued pages Edney says “is quite simply indefensible.” Or as the subtitle to the first chapter states: “There is no such thing as cartography, … Continue reading “Cartography: The Ideal and Its History”
The first three volumes of the History of Cartography Project will be published in Chinese next year, “completing a translation project that began in 2014,” the Project announced on Facebook last week. The Project was one subject of an international seminar on the history of cartography held at Yunnan University last month. Project director Matthew Edney … Continue reading “History of Cartography Project Updates”
Here are the books that, to my knowledge, have been published or are scheduled to be published in 2019. To suggest a book for this list, please contact me. If you are a publisher, author or publicist of one of these books and would like to send me a review copy, see the reviewing guidelines. Note that as an … Continue reading “Map Books of 2019”
“The Limits to Mapping,” a talk Matthew Edney gave at Yale University last week as part of the Franke Program series of lectures, is now available on YouTube. Edney, who’s Osher Professor in the History of Cartography at the University of Southern Maine and the director of the History of Cartography Project (his name’s come up … Continue reading “The Limits to Mapping”
Registration is now open for the 2018 Symposium of the International Society for the History of the Map. It takes place from 21 to 23 June 2018 at the Osher Map Library in Portland, Maine, and it’s free to attend. (Like many academic events, registration is so that they have a number to plan for.) … Continue reading “ISHMap Symposium in Portland, Maine”
A power struggle involving two factions of the International Society for the History of the Map has drawn the attention of, of all places, Deadspin’s The Concourse. The factions are, on the one hand, Dr. Zsolt G. Török, the former president who maintains control of the original ISHMap website; and, on the other, a new executive, chaired by … Continue reading “What the Hell Is Going On with the International Society for the History of the Map? “
Education news website The 74 has its own coverage of the Boston schools/Peters map controversy (is it safe to call it a controversy?), with extensive quotes from Matthew Edney, who does not mince words. (Comparing both projections to Comic Sans? Ouch.) [Caitlin Dempsey] Previously: More on Boston Schools and the Peters Map; The Peters Map Is Fighting the Last War; The … Continue reading “The 74 on Boston Schools and the Peters Map”
Atlas Obscura’s Cara Giaimo has an in-depth look at the reaction to the decision by Boston public schools to adopt the Peters projection in teaching materials. It’s well worth taking the time to read; the general gist from several cartographers and commentators is that swapping the Mercator for the Peters isn’t that much of an … Continue reading “More on Boston Schools and the Peters Map”
