Tag: books

A Japanese Cartography Update

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

cartographic-japanIn the Los Angeles Review of Books, Miriam Kingsberg reviews Cartographic Japan: A History in Maps (University of Chicago Press, March 2016), a collection of essays on the history of Japanese mapmaking edited by Kären Wigen, Sugimoto Fumiko and Cary Karacas (see previous entry). “Cartographic Japan constitutes a significant addition to the academic literature on the history of Japanese mapping. Much like the works it describes, the volume may also be treasured as a piece of art and collector’s item in its own right.” Amazon, iBooks. [WMS]

Meanwhile, a seventeenth-century map of a legendary Japanese fortress has been discovered in a museum’s collection of paintings, the Asahi Shimbun reports. [WMS]

Mapping the Four Corners

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

mapping-the-four-cornersOut this month from University of Oklahoma Press: Mapping the Four Corners: Narrating the Hayden Survey of 1875 by Robert S. McPherson and Susan Rhoades Neel. From the publisher: “By skillfully weaving the surveyors’ diary entries, field notes, and correspondence with newspaper accounts, historians Robert S. McPherson and Susan Rhoades Neel bring the Hayden Survey to life. Mapping the Four Corners provides an entertaining, engaging narrative of the team’s experiences, contextualized with a thoughtful introduction and conclusion.” Buy at Amazon. [WMS]

See also: Map Books of 2016.

A New Academic Book on Renaissance Map Monsters

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

renaissance-ethnographyA new scholarly book about the use of monsters on early modern maps has been brought to my attention. Surekha Davies’s Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters (Cambridge University Press, June) explores the use of both monsters and indigenous peoples on Renaissance maps. “Giants, cannibals and other monsters were a regular feature of Renaissance illustrated maps, inhabiting the Americas alongside other indigenous peoples. In a new approach to views of distant peoples, Surekha Davies analyzes this archive alongside prints, costume books and geographical writing.” Buy at Amazon. [sourdoughchef]

Previously: Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps.

More on Cartographic Grounds

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

cartographic-groundsTwo reviews this week of Cartographic Grounds: Projecting the Landscape Imaginary by Jill Desimini and Charles Waldheim (Princeton Architectural Press, June 2016). Writing for the Huffington Post, Kate Abbey-Lambertz notes that the book follows up on a 2013 exhibition and features a number of its gorgeous maps. And Curbed’s Patrick Sisson points to the book’s argument “for a more design-oriented approach to cartography”:

Jill Elizabeth Desimini, a professor of landscape design at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, argues for a more holistic approach to mapmaking in the digital age. The prevalence of Google Maps, an extremely functional and useful tool, can limit the scope of what we think a map can do, and just how much design can impact its effectiveness and communication potential. As users are presented with maps that contain more and more information, they tend to depend on them and their directions, she says, and lose their critical eye. As cartography moves toward non-physical things, such as check-ins, and abstract forces, Cartographic Grounds raises the question of geographic precision and just what it means to map well.

[Gretchen Peterson/WMS]

Previously: Cartographic Grounds.

Buy Cartographic Grounds at Amazon (Kindle version) or iBooks. See also: Map Books of 2016.

Mapping the Dreamlands

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

vellitt-boe-cover villitt-boe-map-full

Once again, Tor.com is marking the publication of an upcoming fantasy novella, this time The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson, with an essay on how the book’s map, executed by artist Serena Malyon, came into being. Malyon takes us from the author’s own map through several iterations of what ended up as the final map. The end result is a unique take on the fantasy map style, marked by the use of watercolours and perspective, backgrounded by a constellation-filled sky. Amazon (Kindle) / iBooks

Previously: Mapping The Drowning Eyes.

A Forthcoming Map Art Book About New York City

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

you-are-here-nycYesterday on her Facebook page, Katharine Harmon announced her next map art book: You Are Here: NYC: Mapping the Soul of the City is coming in November from Princeton Architectural Press. “It features 150 cartographic views of New York (which has to be the most-mapped city in the world)—including historical maps, cartoons, contemporary art, pictorial maps, hand-drawn maps, and more,” Harmon writes. Based on her previous books, You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination (2004) and The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography (2009), both of which I own, this will almost certainly be a book worth looking for. Pre-order at Amazon.

See also: Map Books of 2016.

New Book: Making Art from Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

making-art-from-mapsJill K. Berry’s latest book, Making Art From Maps: Inspiration, Techniques, and an International Gallery of Artists, is out this month from Rockport Publishers. From the publisher: “With her cartographic connections, she takes you on a gallery tour, introducing you to the work of some of the most exciting artists creating with maps today. Designer interviews are accompanied by 25 accessible how-to projects of her own design that teach many of the techniques used by the gallery artists.”

(I reviewed Berry’s first book, Personal Geographies: Explorations in Mixed-Media Mapmaking, back in 2011.)

Amazon (Kindle) / iBooks

After the Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

after-the-mapWilliam Rankin’s After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territory in the Twentieth Century is out this month from the University of Chicago Press (Amazon, iBooks). The book’s website explains in depth what it’s about, and makes all the book’s illustrations and data available for free download. [GIS Lounge]

This book can be read at two scales. Narrowly, it is a history of the mapping sciences in the twentieth century that situates technologies like GPS within a longer trajectory of spatial knowledge. But more expansively, by connecting geographic knowledge to territorial politics and new ways of navigating the world, it is also a political and cultural history of geographic space itself.

I’ve posted a few of Rankin’s earlier projects for the Radical Cartography website on The Map Room; see for example City Income Donuts and The World’s Population by Latitude and Longitude.

See also: Map Books of 2016.

The Great British Colouring Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

great-british-colouring-mapAnother map colouring book has just been announced, this one from the Ordnance Survey: “The book will take you on an immersive colouring-in journey around Great Britain, from the coasts and forests to our towns and countryside. Expect to see iconic cities, recognisable tourist spots and historical locations across England, Scotland and Wales via the 55 illustrations. The Great British Colouring Map also includes a stunning gatefold of London. We can’t wait to share it with you—it will be on shelves in October.” Pre-order at Amazon.

Previously: A-Z Maps Colouring Book; Albion’s Glorious Ile: A 400-Year-Old Map Colouring Book; City Maps: An Adult Colouring Book.

Atlas Obscura, the Book

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

atlas-obscuraAlways nice to see a familiar website turn up in book form. This time it’s Atlas Obscura’s turn. Altas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders comes out from Workman Publishing in September but can be pre-ordered now.

See my Map Books of 2016 page for other books of interest coming out later this year (several of which I have added within the last week or so).

Update, 19 September: My review of Atlas Obscura.

The Chicago Tribune Reviews Two Map Books

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

mind-the-mapcartographic-groundsWriting for the Chicago Tribune, Patrick Reardon reviews two map books I’ve mentioned before, albeit briefly: Cartographic Grounds: Projecting the Landscape Imaginary, edited by Jill Desimini and Charles Waldheim, which comes out in a few days; and Mind the Map: Illustrated Maps and Cartography, edited by Antonis Antoniou, Robert Klanten and Sven Ehmann, which came out last September. “Each of these books aims to show a wide spectrum of map-making,” writes Reardon, “and together they cover just about the entire waterfront.” [WMS]

Previously: Cartographic Grounds; Mind the Map.

Cartographic Grounds

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

cartographic-groundsNext week sees the publication of Cartographic Grounds: Projecting the Landscape Imaginary by Jill Desimini and Charles Waldheim (Princeton Architectural Press). From the publisher: “While documenting this shift in representation from the material and physical description toward the depiction of the unseen and often immaterial, Cartographic Grounds takes a critical view toward the current use of data mapping and visualization and calls for a return to traditional cartographic to reimagine the manifestation and manipulation of the ground itself.” Cartographic Grounds’ ten chapters each focus on one cartographic technique; each of these techniques is illustrated in Atlas Obscura’s post last month about the book. [Benjamin Hennig]

More books have been added to the Map Books of 2016 page: have a look. Some are available right now; others you’ll have to preorder. As usual, buying via this website helps support The Map Room.

I thought about doing a similar page listing map colouring books for adults, but it seems redundant when you can just refer to the colouring books tag (or the coloring books tag, if you’re going to be insistently American).

Maps of the Netherlands Antilles

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

nederlandse-antillenIf you can read Dutch, there’s a new book about the old maps of the Netherlands Antilles: Wim Renkema’s Kaarten van de Nederlandse Antillen: Curaçao, Aruba, Bonaire, Saba, Sint Eustatius en Sint Maarten tot 1900 (Brill, May 2016). Includes an English summary if you can’t; I presume it’s heavily illustrated. More from the Daily Herald of St. Maarten. Buy at Amazon. [WMS]