books – Page 16 – The Map Room

New Edition of Times Concise Atlas Now Out

Published on 13 September 201613 September 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

The 13th edition of the The Times Concise Atlas of the World came out last week. The HarperCollins listing sets out the updates and changes from the previous edition (including changing “Czech Republic” to “Czechia,” argh). The Concise is the second-largest of the Times world atlases and slots between the Comprehensive and the Universal in terms of physical size, page count, number of maps and place names. Here’s a handy chart showing the differences between the various Times atlases. [Collins Maps]

Related: Map Books of 2016.

Great City Maps

Published on 7 September 20167 September 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Out this month from Dorling Kindersley: Great City Maps, an illustrated collection of historical and modern city maps from around the globe. The Guardian has a gallery of selections from the book (as does the publisher’s page). Buy at Amazon. [WMS]

DeLorme Atlas and Gazetteer Line to Continue

Published on 30 August 201610 September 2020 by Jonathan Crowe

Ever since Garmin announced it was purchasing DeLorme last February, there has been considerable anxiety in Maine over the possibility that the Maine Atlas and Gazetteer would be discontinued. Everyone in Maine can now relax: Garmin has announced that it’s keeping DeLorme’s entire Atlas and Gazetteer line of paper atlases.

“As a part of the acquisition earlier this year and subsequent integration efforts, Garmin recently completed its analysis of DeLorme’s Atlas & Gazetteer business. We have concluded that these venerated, highly respected products will not only remain as a part of Garmin’s offering, but will continue to be enhanced in the coming months and years,” said Ted Gartner, director of corporate communications for Garmin.

“Because the DeLorme name is so well-known and closely associated with the unique feature set and style of the Atlas & Gazetteers, which combines digital cartography with human editing, the product line will continue under the same iconic brand and familiar appearance. Furthermore, we will be revising and updating the atlas series in the coming years, by investing in additional resources and cartography staff based in the Yarmouth facility, formerly the DeLorme headquarters,” Gartner added.

[MAPS-L]

Previously: It’s ‘Too Early’ to Announce the Fate of the Maine Atlas; Mainers Speak Out on the DeLorme Atlas; ‘Keep Your Hands Off My Gazetteer’; Maine Reacts to DeLorme’s Acquisition by Garmin; Garmin Is Buying DeLorme.

Update, 1 Sept.: Bangor Daily News coverage. [WMS]

Making Maps, Third Edition

Published on 29 August 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

On the Making Maps: DIY Cartography blog, John Krygier announces the third edition of his and Denis Wood’s Making Maps: A Visual Guide to Map Design for GIS, out this month from Guilford Press. The new edition of this extremely visual guide includes more than 40 new pages of content, Krygier says, plus new maps and examples and other changes he details in the blog post. Buy at Amazon.

(I reviewed the first edition back in 2006. I knew a lot less about cartography back then, and I suspect it shows.)

A Japanese Cartography Update

Published on 18 August 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

In 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 16 August 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Out 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]

A New Academic Book on Renaissance Map Monsters

Published on 9 August 20169 August 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

A 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.

Pinpoint Reviewed in Geographical Magazine

Published on 8 August 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Jon Wright reviews Greg Milner’s Pinpoint, the U.K. edition of which is now available, in the August 2016 issue of Geographical magazine. “Some of the claims about how GPS ‘may fundamentally change us as human beings’ seem inflated, but the book is a useful starting point for discussion.” Amazon, iBooks.

Previously: Pinpoint Now Out.

More on Cartographic Grounds

Published on 5 August 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Two 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 3 August 2016 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 22 July 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Yesterday 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.

New Book: Making Art from Maps

Published on 22 July 201622 July 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Jill 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 18 July 201618 July 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

William 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.

The Great British Colouring Map

Published on 18 July 201618 July 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Another 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.