Jared Lando’s How to Draw Fantasy Art and RPG Maps (Impact, August 2015) is a step-by-step guide to fantasy cartography. That it professes to teach how to draw “authentic fantasy maps” is as clear evidence as any that fantasy maps have a clearly defined style that is difficult to deviate from. This is a book I need to track down, stat. Amazon, iBooks.
Tag: books
City Maps: An Adult Colouring Book
Gretchen Peterson has announced City Maps: A Coloring Book for Adults. Adult colouring books have rapidly become a Thing; Peterson once wondered why there weren’t any map colouring books (which is a damn good question: the closest I’d been able to find is Splendid Cities) so she made one herself. “I’m excited about this because normally I make maps that are more scientific, regulatory, or otherwise government oriented but this is a collection of maps for everyone. And what’s more, everyone can color them just the way they want to!” Available now from Amazon.
The Chang’E-1 Topographic Atlas of the Moon
Universe Today has a review of The Chang’E-1 Topographic Atlas of the Moon (Springer, February 2016) a book of lunar maps based on digital elevation model data and stereo imagery from the CNSA’s Chang’e-1 spacecraft. (The first edition was published in Chinese and English in 2012.)
Talking About Map Thefts
Here’s a profile of Thomas Durrer, the University of Virginia detective assigned to the Gilbert Bland map theft case, in the spring 2016 issue of Virginia, the university’s alumni magazine. [via]
Bland’s career predated Forbes Smiley’s (he lacked Smiley’s ostensible pedigree) and was the focus of Miles Harvey’s 2000 book The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime (Amazon, iBooks).
Smiley was, of course, the subject of Michael Blanding’s 2014 book The Map Thief (Amazon, iBooks; see my review). Blanding is on a bit of a campus speaking tour at the moment, discussing the Smiley case. He’s at the University of Florida tonight, the University of Miami tomorrow night, and more college campuses in April and May.
People and Places
Coming next month from Policy Press, the third edition of People and Places: A 21st-Century Atlas of the U.K. by Danny Dorling and Bethan Thomas. The Independent has a long profile of the book, which makes extensive use of cartograms to illustrate data about the British population, and one of its co-authors, Oxford geography professor Danny Dorling. Pre-order at Amazon (direct Amazon U.K. link—it’s more likely to be in stock there). [via]
Women in Cartography
Something worth mentioning on International Women’s Day: the Boston Public Library’s exhibition, Women in Cartography: Five Centuries of Accomplishments, opened last October and runs until 26 March at the Central Library’s Leventhal Map Center. The exhibition can also be viewed online.
A few books about women in cartography:
- Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman Who Mapped the Ocean Floor by Hali Felt (Henry Holt, 2012), a biography of oceanographer Marie Tharp (Amazon, iBooks)
- Mrs. P’s Journey: The Remarkable Story of the Woman Who Created the A-Z Map by Sarah Hartley (2001), a biography of A-Z Map Company founder Phyllis Pearsall (Amazon UK)
- Map Worlds: A History of Women in Cartography by Will C. van den Hoonaard (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013), a scholarly history of women mapmakers since the 16th century (Amazon)
Previously: Two More Map Books; Soundings: A Biography of Marie Tharp; The Urban Legend of Phyllis Pearsall; Phyllis Pearsall.
National Geographic Atlas Reviewed in Cartographic Perspectives
When I reviewed the Ninth Edition of the National Geographic Atlas of the World in 2010, I compared it virtually plate-by-plate with the Eighth Edition. With the Atlas’s Tenth Edition, which came out in the fall of 2014, Christine Newton Bush does something similar in her review for Cartographic Perspectives: emphasize what’s new and changed. When you have a reference product that updates every few years, people may well wonder each time a new edition comes out whether now is the time to replace their older copy, so this approach makes a lot of sense. And not just because I’ve done it myself. Buy at Amazon.
China at the Center
Two important seventeenth-century world maps are the focus of a new exhibition opening this Friday at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. China at the Center: Rare Ricci and Verbiest World Maps, which runs from 4 March to 8 May 2016, features Matteo Ricci’s 1602 map and Ferdinand Verbiest’s 1674 map.
Ricci (1552–1610) and Verbiest (1623–1688) were both Jesuit priests, in China to spread Christianity; their maps, produced in collaboration with Chinese calligraphers, artists and printers, produced a fundamental rethinking of China’s place in the world. Not that China wasn’t at the centre of these maps, as the essays in the accompanying catalogue point out, but these maps filled out the rest of the world, which was previously a marginal afterthought in Chinese cartography.
Historical Atlas of Maine Wins AAG Award
DeLorme isn’t the only one with a Maine atlas. About a year ago the University of Maine Press published the Historical Atlas of Maine, edited by Richard Judd and Stephen Hornsby. “The atlas, the result of a 15-year scholarly project led by University of Maine researchers, offers a new geographical and historical interpretation of Maine, from the end of the last ice age to the year 2000,” says the university. “The 208-page atlas features 76 two-page plates with a rich array of 367 original maps, 112 original charts and 248 other images—historical maps, paintings and photos—in addition to its text. The result is a unique interpretation of Maine, a rich visual record of the state’s history, and a major achievement in humanities research.” Last month it won the 2016 AAG Globe Book Award for Public Understanding of Geography. Buy at Amazon or via the publisher. [via]
The Art of Illustrated Maps
The Scituate Mariner has a profile of local resident John Roman, an illustrator whose book, The Art of Illustrated Maps, came out from HOW Design Books last fall. If “illustrated maps” sounds redundant to you, Roman means by it maps that are illustrations, maps that are conceptual rather than geographic—art rather than geometry. Buy at Amazon. [via]
The North Carolina Civil War Atlas
The result of a decade’s worth of research, The Old North State at War: The North Carolina Civil War Atlas, written by Mark Anderson Moore with Jessica Bandel and Michael Hill, is now available. The book “is a comprehensive study of the impact of the war on the Tar Heel State, incorporating 99 newly prepared maps. The large format (17″ by 11″) volume highlights every significant military engagement and analyzes the war’s social, economic and political consequences through tables, charts and text.” Produced by the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, it can be ordered through their online store, at the North Carolina Museum of History or selected state historic sites. Read historian John David Smith’s review in The News & Observer. [via]
Mainers Speak Out on the DeLorme Atlas
The issue of whether the Maine Atlas and Gazetteer will survive DeLorme’s purchase by Garmin continues to be of concern to Maine residents. The Bangor Daily News last Thursday:
Some Mainers consider DeLorme’s Atlas and Gazetteer their own backwoods bibles. The collection of maps works perfectly for planning expeditions afield, and can prompt plenty of discussion around a wood stove after a long day of hunting or fishing.
When the BDN asked for readers to share their thoughts on the iconic map book, dozens responded, telling us how much the maps have mattered to them.
[via]
Previously: ‘Keep Your Hands Off My Gazetteer’; Maine Reacts to DeLorme’s Acquisition by Garmin.
Around Switzerland in 80 Maps
The Local profiles
Lausanne-based game and book company Helvetiq, which last year published Diccon Bewes’s Around Switzerland in 80 Maps. Those maps range, according to the publisher, “from the circular island map of 1480 to the birth of modern Swiss cartography; from the British rail plan for Switzerland to a Soviet map of Basel during the Cold War; from the 1970s Zurich map for men to the vision of a Greater Switzerland with 40 cantons.” Buy at Amazon. [via]
A New Book About Frederick de Wit
The 17th-century Dutch cartographer Frederick de Wit, “one of the most famous dealers of maps, prints and art during the Dutch Golden Age,” is the subject of a new book: George Carhart’s Frederick de Wit and the First Concise Reference Atlas, out this month from Brill Publishing. Buy at Amazon (Canada, U.K.) [via]
‘Keep Your Hands Off My Gazetteer’
DeLorme publishes other state atlases and gazetteers, but the Maine Atlas and Gazetteer is the one that started it all, the one Mainers rely on heavily, the one they’re worried might disappear now that DeLorme’s been bought by Garmin. Hence screeds like Troy Bennett’s (I should warn you, there are song lyrics):
Is there any other publication so complete, showing roads, trails, campgrounds, public reserve land, rivers, coves, islands and city streets? Am I the only one who didn’t know what an esker was before they picked up a Gazetteer? I doubt it.
If the new owners kill the map that helps define the state, what will happen to us? How will we know the Crocker Cirque even exists, let alone how to find it. (Map 29, D3, by the way.)
So, I’m looking at you, Garmin, out there in Kansas: Keep your hands off my Gazetteer.
Of course, nothing’s happened yet, and nothing may necessarily happen, but Maine losing the Maine Atlas and Gazetteer would be like London losing the A to Z or Winnipeg the Sherlock atlas: paper maps that are local, idiosyncratic, and essential. [via]
Previously: Maine Reacts to DeLorme’s Acquisition by Garmin.