Tag: books

Review: Telling Stories with Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Book cover: Telling Stories with Maps by Allen Carroll (Esri, 2025).

Fundamentally, Allen Carroll’s Telling Stories with Maps: Lessons from a Lifetime of Creating Place-Based Narratives is a book about using Esri’s ArcGIS StoryMaps service for creating digital narratives with maps. It’s of little use to anyone not using StoryMaps, but it’s not quite a user manual either. It presents the theory and practice of map-based storytelling, as applicable to the StoryMaps user base, with examples from Carroll’s long career, most notably at the National Geographic Society from 1983 to 2010, and then at Esri, where he went on to found their StoryMaps platform.

Carroll’s transition from National Geographic to Esri—a good chunk of Telling Stories with Maps serves as a memoir of Carroll’s working life—parallels a transition from analog to digital storytelling, and despite differences in medium, Carroll demonstrates that map-based narratives cover both the National Geographic maps (think the back sides of the map inserts) and interactive maps.

As StoryMaps emerged, one tool at a time, it presented a challenge: as Carroll notes, its users were GIS professionals who were not necessarily equipped to be storytellers—to be able to craft a narrative that held the attention of the reader. Telling Stories with Maps is an attempt to address that knowledge gap, with a bit of theory of narrative and a boatload of real-world examples (collected online here, because in-book screenshots can only do so much). As such it’s a book about what StoryMaps is for—what you can do with it, the best way to use it—rather than a step-by-step instruction manual.

I received an electronic review copy from the publisher.

Telling Stories with Maps
by Allen Carroll
Esri, 10 Jun 2025
Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop

History of Cartography Project’s Fifth Volume Goes to Press

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The History of Cartography Project’s fifth and final volume, Cartography in the Nineteenth Century, has finally gone to press, though the massive book will take two years to work its way through the production pipeline. It’s scheduled for publication in 2027.

(All previous volumes are available as free downloads in PDF format. So will volume five, once it’s been out for a couple of years.)

Previously: History of Cartography Project’s Fourth Volume Now Available Online; Forty Years of the History of Cartography Project; The History of Cartography’s Fourth Volume, Now (Almost) Out; History of Cartography Project Updates; History of Cartography Project’s Sixth Volume Now Available Online; History of Cartography Project’s Sixth Volume Now Out.

Maps on Vinyl in the Guardian

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Damien Saunder’s book about maps on record covers, Maps on Vinyl, got a writeup in the Guardian last week.

Front and rear oblique views of the cover of Damien Saunder’s book Maps on Vinyl.

Some designs address global social or environmental issues. Others map the mind, imaginary places, feelings, worldviews—or, in the case of Robert Fripp and Brian Eno’s The Equatorial Stars, deep space.

Among Saunder’s personal favourites is a sleeve from the long-gone Iowa alt rock band House of Large Sizes, showing a cake whose icing is decorated with a map, with a chunk missing. “It’s a commentary on how we’re consuming the world piece by piece, almost without noticing,” says Saunder.

Another favourite cover comes from Belgian punk band Hetze: an illustration of a globe dangling by a thread from the forefinger of an elegant, long-nailed hand, by tattoo artist Florence Roman.

Previously: Maps on Vinyl.

The Map Men Visit the Ordnance Survey, and Also Wrote a Book

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Map Men Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones visit the Ordnance Survey in a (sponsored) set of two (vertically aligned short) videos: part one, part two. Complete with map-folding mishaps, gratuitous hi-viz vest wearing, and a Google Maps dig.

Meanwhile, they’ve also gone and written a book: This Way Up: When Maps Go Wrong (and Why It Matters) will be out from HarperCollins imprints in the fall of 2025: the U.K. edition will come out from Mudlark in October (£17) and the U.S. edition from Hanover Square Press in November ($30). Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.

Maps on Vinyl

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Front and back cover of Maps on Vinyl.

Maps on Vinyl: An Atlas of Album Cover Maps collects some 415 examples of record albums with maps on the cover. “The book is the brainchild of renowned Australian cartographer Damien Saunder, whose expertise has been utilised by Apple, National Geographic, Earth (the world’s largest atlas) and even Roger Federer. A keen crate-digger, he has amassed possibly the world’s most extensive private collection of records featuring maps on their covers, resulting in this one-of-a-kind book.” Self-published in Australia, it’s being distributed in the United States via The Map Center.

Related: Map Books of 2025.

47 Borders Reviewed

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

“Someone needs to tell him that the lines on maps are not supposed to be this entertaining.” Drew Gallagher reviews Jonn Elledge’s Brief History of the World in 47 Borders in the Washington Independent Review of Books. “Throughout, Elledge’s writing is equal parts insightful and amusing, and his myriad footnotes contain some of the funniest writing.” (Published too late to make this month’s book roundup.)

Book Roundup: December 2024

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Volume 7 of the Atlas of Design, opened to a two-page spread showing images of a quilt map by Eleanor Lutz.
Atlas of Design, vol. 7

A lack of time and energy have conspired to prevent me from serving up a gift guide this year, but I can point you to a few links related to books that have come out this year.

First up, I have in my hands a review copy of the seventh volume of the Atlas of Design. It is the usual collection of marvellous cartography from familiar and unfamiliar mapmakers, some of which quite unexpected, and I hope to have more to say about it shortly. It made its debut at the NACIS annual meeting in October and is available to purchase from this page. See my review of the sixth volume.

Matthew Edney’s list of map history books published or seen in 2024 is now live; he’s been posting such a list each year since 2017 (previously).

40 Maps, 47 Borders, 50 Transit Maps

Alaistair Bonnett’s latest, 40 Maps That Will Change How You See the World came out in September from Ivy Press. Geographical magazine published an interview with him in October. I’ve reviewed two of Bonnett’s books here before—Off the Map (Unruly Places) and The Age of Islands (Elsewhere)—which were more about geographical curiosities than maps per se. Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

To promote A History of the World in 47 Borders (Wildfire, April)—published in the U.S. as A Brief History of the World in 47 Borders (The Experiment, October)—Jonn Elledge has posted a list of the 47 facts about the 47 borders that are the focus of the book’s 47 chapters. Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

Mark Ovenden’s latest, Iconic Transit Maps (Prestel, 2024) is a look at transit map design via fifty examples around the world. Cameron Booth reviews it on his Transit Maps blog. Way back in 2008, I reviewed the first edition of his Transit Maps of the World. Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

Book covers for Bonnett’s 40 Maps That Will Change How You See the World, Elledge’s History of the World in 47 Borders, and Ovenden’s Iconic Transit Maps.

Related: Map Books of 2024.

Review: Mapmatics

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The first intimation I had that maps involved mathematics was when I looked up a map projection and came face to face with the equation that generated it. Math was never my strongest subject, so it’s probably for the best that I never went into cartography. Especially since it turns out that there’s a lot more math hidden behind the maps we use on a daily basis than you might think, a point demonstrated in detail by Paulina Rowińska’s book, Mapmatics, which came out in June from Picador in the U.K. and from Belknap in the U.S. in September.

Book cover: Mapmatics (US edition)

Cartographic problems are often mathematical problems: Gauss’s Remarkable Theorem demonstrates that a flat projection of a round globe must necessarily add distortion. Surveying by triangulation is simple trigonometry. The coastline paradox, whereby the length of a coastline depends on the scale at which it’s measured, is because the coastline is fractal. Real-world navigational problems can be solved via topology and graph theory, algorithms and heuristics. The takeaway from this book is these things are math, and that math is at the heart of so much of this.

Rowińska is a mathematician and science writer, and she very much approaches her subject from the math side of things. Making the subject accessible to non-mathematicians is no small challenge, especially when moving to subjects that, while absolutely part of the discipline of mathematics, don’t obviously code as such to normies. Graph theory, number theory, probability density function and topology make their appearances. (I confess to being surprised at the omission of GPS, but now that I think about it, GPS is really about timekeeping and physics.) No less a challenge is finding the balance between explaining the mathematical concepts and explaining how they apply to mapping, and doing so in a way that doesn’t completely lose the plot and turn the whole thing into a math textbook with cartographic examples.

Book cover for the U.K. edition of Paulina Rowińska’s Mapmatics (Picador).

On balance I think Rowińska mostly succeeds: there were plenty of points where the math was still esoteric to me, but I still got that, yes, this was math, and here’s what it does in these cases. As the book progresses the math gets a bit more remote from popular understanding, and the map side of things is less about maps than the data being mapped, but even then the examples are absolutely real-world and relatable (gerrymandering, disease mapping), and there are plenty of a-ha moments coming from the math behind familiar puzzles like the travelling salesman problem and the four-colour theorem.

I received an electronic review copy from the publisher.

Related: Map Books of 2024.

Mapmatics
by Paulina Rowińska
Picador, 6 Jun 2024 (UK) | Belknap, 17 Sep 2024 (US)
Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

A Moving Border

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Screenshot from the Italian Limes website, showing the positions of solar powered GPS sensors on a glacier straddling the Austro-Italian border.
Italian Limes (screenshot)

Part research project, part art installation, the Italian Limes project explored a quirk about the Italian border that frankly boggles my mind a bit. Italy’s alpine frontiers with Switzerland and Austria generally follows the watershed line. Thanks to climate change and shrinking glaciers, that line has been shifting, so Italy entered into agreements with Austria (in 2006) and Switzerland (in 2009) to redefine their borders as moving borders, shifting as the watershed line changes. (This is not something I would have expected: see, for example, U.S. state boundaries remaining where the Mississippi River used to be, rather than its present course). Italy’s official maps are updated every two years. In 2014 and 2016 Italian Limes dropped solar-powered GPS sensors on the surface of a glacier to track the shifts in the border in real time; the accompanying art installations slash exhibitions allowed visitors to plot the border at that moment. A book followed in 2019. [Maps Mania]

Two Map Books from the Bodleian

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Images of two books showing their jacket covers: Kris Butler's Drink Maps in Victorian Britain (left) and Debbie Hall's Adventures in Maps (right).

Some coverage of two map books published earlier this year by Bodleian Library. First, Atlas Obscura interviews Kris Butler, whose Drink Maps in Victorian Britain looks at how the temperance movement used maps to fight excessive alcohol consumption. They were, apparently, directly inspired by John Snow’s cholera map. From the interview:

Drink maps were specific to targeting the U.K. magistrates, to try to get these lawmakers to stop granting licenses. So it had a really specific legislative, regulatory goal. […] In one case [in 1882, in the borough of Over Darwen in Lancashire, England], after looking at a drink map, the magistrates decided to close half of the places to buy alcohol. Their rationale was, even if we close half of these, you still don’t have to walk more than two minutes to buy another beer, which I just think is the most beautiful rationale I’ve ever read. It was challenged, and it held up on appeal.

Meanwhile, the Bodleian’s own Map Room Blog (no relation) points to Debbie Hall’s Adventures in Maps, a book about maps and travel and exploration. From the book listing: “The twenty intriguing journeys and routes featured in this book range from distances of a few miles to great adventures across land, sea, air and space. Some describe the route that a traveller followed, some are the results of exploration and others were made to show future travellers the way to go, accompanied by useful and sometimes very beautiful maps.” I reviewed Debbie Hall’s Treasures from the Map Room (also no relation) in 2016.

Adventures in Maps by Debbie Hall: Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop
Drink Maps in Victorian Britain by Kris Butler: Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

See also: Map Books of 2024.

Site Updates and Upgrades

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

More than two dozen book listings have just been added to the Map Books of 2024 page. I’ve also been making some long overdue tweaks to the design and functionality of the site, including switching to WordPress’s Gutenberg editor at long last (which has, unsurprisingly, involved some glitches and hiccups). Also, the Tumblr mirror has been retired; see the Subscribe and Follow page for other ways to receive new updates.

All Mapped Out

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Book cover: All Mapped OutCultural geographer Mike Duggan’s 2017 Ph.D. thesis was an ethnographic study of digital mapping practices in everyday life. His new book, All Mapped Out (Reaktion, 1 Feb 20241) “is an exploration of how maps impact our lives on social and cultural levels.” He explains a bit about what this means in a recent article in The Conversation.

Maps and what we do with them cannot be defined universally. Ideals and ideas about maps frequently clash with the reality of how and why maps are used. By bringing together my own research studying map users in London, and the work of others who have researched mapping practices around the world, I want to show how uses of maps are shaped by different cultures, communities, contexts and technology. […]

In my work there are several overlapping themes that chart how maps have become tied to culture and society. I want to do more than identify maps that have changed the world, or lay out the history of maps and society. Instead, I want to show that all maps have the potential to change the world and shape society. It’s just a matter of where you look and whose world you are interested in.

Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop

Discounted Map Books at the University of Chicago Press

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The annual University of Chicago Press book sale is frequently hazardous to one’s bank account. This year’s is especially dangerous for map lovers: I count more than 20 cartographic titles with discounts varying between 29 and 76 percent (the PDF catalog shows the discount more clearly), including several I’ve previously reviewed (Picturing America, The Red Atlas, A History of America in 100 Maps, The Writer’s Map, Phantom Islands, Elsewhere). The fact that I already have most of these books—admittedly most as review copies—keeps me relatively safe (which is good: I’m still recovering from last year’s sale).