books – Page 17 – The Map Room

The Chicago Tribune Reviews Two Map Books

Published on 9 June 20169 June 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Writing 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 7 June 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Next 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 1 June 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

If 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]

A-Z Maps Colouring Book

Published on 25 May 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

There are more map colouring books out there than I realized (I’m going to have to compile a list). For example, A-Z Maps’ Maps: A Colouring Book, which came out last October. From the publisher: “This adult colouring book includes a number of street maps from around Great Britain including London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Manchester, together with some more unusual designs—contour lines around Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon and some fascinating map mandalas (intricate patterns created by repeating sections of mapping around a central point).” Buy at Amazon. [A-Z Maps]

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

Albion’s Glorious Ile: A 400-Year-Old Map Colouring Book

Published on 24 May 201625 May 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

What’s old is new again. Maps created by engraver William Hole to illustrate Michael Drayton’s 17th-century, 15,000-line poem Poly-Olbion are being reprinted—as an adult colouring book called Albion’s Glorious Ile, coming out next month from Unicorn Press (pre-order at Amazon).

As the Guardian article about the book points out, hand-colouring maps and illustrations was a common activity before full-colour printing was a thing, so the current mania for adult colouring books—Gretchen Peterson’s City Maps: A Coloring Book for Adults is The Map Room’s best-selling book this year by a large, large margin—can in some ways be seen as a reversion rather than a new thing.

The Guardian has a gallery of Hole’s maps (taken from the colouring book). The Poly-Olbion Project also has a page about Hole’s maps. [WMS]

Previously: City Maps: An Adult Colouring Book.

Pinpoint Now Out

Published on 18 May 201618 May 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Greg Milner’s Pinpoint: How GPS Is Changing Technology, Culture and Our Minds is out this month from W. W. Norton. (The British edition, published by Granta, comes out in July.) Pinpoint explores the social impact of GPS, which sounds very interesting. I’ll have to lay hands on a copy. Reviews: Will Self in the Guardian, Kirkus Reviews and Maclean’s. Amazon, iBooks.

Previously: ‘Could Society’s Embrace of GPS Be Eroding Our Cognitive Maps?’

Six Maps from Connectography

Published on 15 May 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

The Washington Post’s Wonkblog has an interview with Parag Khanna that features six interesting maps from his book Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization (Amazon, iBooks); each map is discussed in some detail. [Cartophilia]

Previously: The U.S. as Seven Mega Regions.

It’s ‘Too Early’ to Announce the Fate of the Maine Atlas

Published on 10 May 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

It’s been three months since Garmin announced its purchase of DeLorme, and there’s still no word on the future of DeLorme’s Maine Atlas and Gazetteer, at least if this item in the May 2016 issue of Down East is any indication.

As of press time, Garmin hasn’t committed either to keeping or killing the Gazetteer, but the PR mumbo jumbo doesn’t sound good: “We’re currently evaluating the DeLorme product roadmap, but it’s too early to make any official announcements on our plan going forward,” one press rep told us. “We are still continuing to sell [Gazetteers] and we don’t expect that to change, um, right away,” said another.

The article also notes that, unlike the atlas, Google Maps and GPS don’t indicate road quality—which in rural Maine is very much a thing. [MAPS-L]

Previously: 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.

A few more books have been added to the Map Books of 2016 page (for which I have relied upon reader submissions, as well as shameless cribbing from Bert Johnson’s indefatigable posts to the Washington Map Society Facebook group; he often tracks upcoming book releases).

A Book About the Hydrographic Survey of Bermuda

Published on 2 May 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Adrian Webb’s Thomas Hurd, RN and His Hydrographic Survey of Bermuda, a book about the hydrographic survey of Bermuda conducted by Royal Navy hydrographer Thomas Hurd between 1789 and 1797, has just been published by the National Museum of Bermuda, the Bermudian Royal Gazette reports. Not available on Amazon, no link at the Museum’s website. [WMS]

Herb Lester, Travel Guide Publisher

Published on 29 April 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

herb-lester-paris

Gear Patrol interviews Ben Olins and Jane Smillie, the founders of travel guide publisher Herb Lester Associates. “[A]fter designing three unique maps in three major cities, they realized there was something to the idea of curating small guides (nothing too expensive, or too ordinary) accompanied by hand-drawn maps. As the company celebrates its sixth birthday this month, we caught up with the founders to chat about maps with personality, curating entire cities and the pitfalls of travel.” Amazon [NLS Maps]

Rather than doing a gift guide to map books for the holiday season, as I’ve done in previous years (2015, 2014, 2013), I’ve created a Map Books of 2016 page, organized by month, that I’ll be updating throughout the year as new titles are announced. Possibly you will find it useful.

The Pre-Siege Maps of Malta

Published on 27 April 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Produced by the Malta Map Society and Maltese publisher BDL, Albert Ganado and Joseph Schirò’s Pre-Siege Maps of Malta “embraces all the pre-siege separate maps of Malta, whether manuscript or printed, as well as the appearance of Malta on the maps of the Mediterranean drawn by Ptolemy in the second century AD, by Al-Idrisi in 1157, and by practically all the cartographers that came after them up to 1564.” More from the Times of Malta. Not available at Amazon, but can be purchased directly from the publisher. [WMS/WMS]