The Map Books of 2024 page is now live; I managed to get an early start on it this year. There aren’t many books listed so far, because it’s early, and books in this category typically get published in the second half of the year. But you can help me fill in the blanks. If you know about a book coming out some time this year that’s on a map-related subject, please let me know. Ideally, the book is in the publisher’s catalogue and has at least a tentative publication date, but I’ll work with what I can get; I basically just need something to link to.
Tag: books
Map History Books of 2023
Just before Christmas, Matthew Edney posted his list of map history books published (or seen) in 2023. He’s been posting an annual list of such books since 2017 (previously).
2023 Holiday Gift Guide
Here’s the 2023 iteration of my annual gift guide. The idea of which is, if you have a map-obsessed person in your life and would like to give them something map-related—or you are a map-obsessed person and would like your broad hints to have something to link to—this guide may give you some ideas.
This is not a list of recommendations: what’s here is mainly what I’ve spotted online, and there’s probably a lot more out there. In most cases I haven’t even seen what’s listed here, much less reviewed it: these are simply things that look like they might be fit for gift giving. (Anyone who tries to parlay this into “recommended by The Map Room” is going to get a very sad look from me.)
A New Edition of the Times Comprehensive Atlas
The 16th edition of the granddaddy of world atlases, the Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, is out this fall. It was published last month in the U.K. (on 12 October) and will ship in North American next month (on 12 December). It comes five years after the publication of the 15th edition (my review of that edition is something I’m still rather proud of). As with everything else, the price has gone up a bit, edition to edition: £175 in the U.K. (up from £150 for the 15th), $260 in the U.S. (up from $200) and $285 in Canada (up from $275).
Some of the changes since that 15th edition are listed on the publisher’s page, and a lot of them deal with updating place names:
- New country names for Eswatini (formerly Swaziland)1 and North Macedonia (previously the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia)
- More than 8000 place name changes with names comprehensively updated in Kazakhstan and Ukraine
- Addition of Māori names in New Zealand and restored indigenous names in Australia, the most notable being the renaming of Fraser Island in Queensland to its Butchulla name K’gari
- Administrative boundary updates in Ethiopia, Mali and Kazakhstan
- Added road, railway and airport infrastructure across the globe including the 4km-long Dardanelles Bridge (Turkey), the Fehmarn Belt road/rail tunnel alignment (Germany/Denmark) and the Sandoy Tunnel (Faroe Islands)
Each round of Times atlases has its own cover design language: from this Comprehensive and next year’s announced Desktop we can see that this round of atlases combines dark relief backgrounds with bright title and spine colours. Neon green is an unexpected choice for the Comprehensive, especially given how restrained the 15th was. I wonder what the bookmark looks like.
The Lost Subways of North America
The Lost Subways of North America, in which Jake Berman looks at the successes and failures of 23 North American transit systems, is out now from the University of Chicago Press. The book’s text is accompanied by a hundred or so of Berman’s own maps, and is based on his series of maps of discontinued and proposed subway systems: see the online index for what made it into the book. On his blog, Berman is posting “deleted scenes”: city chapters that were cut from the book for length, like Denver and Portland.
See the Guardian’s interview with Berman (thanks, Michael); the Strong Towns interview focuses specifically on Los Angeles.
Astronomy Atlas 1899: A New Kickstarter Project
Alejandro Polanco’s latest Kickstarter project, Astronomy Atlas 1899, does for 19th-century astronomy atlases what his previous Geography 1880 project did for school atlases of the era: create an anthology of the best maps, drawings and diagrams from the books available to him.
In my library, in addition to the collection of geographical atlases from the 18th to the 21st century, there is a whole series of old books on astronomy, and of all of them, the ones that attract me the most are those published between 1880 and 1930. This was a time when science was developing at an astonishing rate and astronomy was changing radically. […]
In total there are twelve astronomical atlases in this library, mostly Spanish, French and English, published between 1880 and the early 1930s. From these I have selected the most interesting engravings and drawings, arranged them chronologically and given details of the original source. I have also supplemented many of them with other engravings from the Biblioteca Nacional de España and similar sources.
Digital (€18), softcover (€45) and limited-edition hardcover (€90) versions will be produced.
Updated the Map Books of 2023 page last week with some titles I hadn’t previously known about. I try to make this list as comprehensive as possible, so if I’ve missed something, let me know.
A Book Roundup: Recent New Publications
Writing for Geographical magazine, Katherine Parker reviews A History of the World in 500 Maps by Christian Grataloup (Thames & Hudson, 13 Jul 2023), which was originally published in French in 2019. “[E]ven with 500 maps, there’s a selection process at work that may leave some readers wanting for specific trajectories and topics. For example, although there’s a continual emphasis on economics, commerce and migration, the impact of the Transatlantic slave trade is only lightly addressed. Similarly, Indigenous perspectives are present, but not abundant. However, such critiques of lacuna in subject coverage are inevitable in any book that attempts to include all of human history.” Note that the maps are modern maps of history created for this book, not old maps. UK-only publication. £35. Amazon UK.
The 38th volume of the Esri Map Book (Esri, 5 Sep 2023) came out earlier this month. Like the NACIS Atlas of Design (previously),2 it’s a showcase of maps presented at a conference—in this case, maps from the Map Gallery exhibition of Esri’s International User Conference. The Esri Map Book website has a gallery of maps presumably from this volume, and given the number of pages in the book (140) and the number of maps in the gallery (65), it may actually be complete (assuming a two-page spread per map). $30. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
Peter Bellerby, of bespoke premium globemaker Bellerby & Co. fame, has written a book: The Globemakers: The Curious Story of an Ancient Craft (Bloomsbury) is out today in hardcover in the UK, and in North America on October 17; the ebook is available worldwide as of today. From the publisher: “The Globemakers brings us inside Bellerby’s gorgeous studio to learn how he and his team of cartographers and artists bring these stunning celestial, terrestrial, and planetary objects to life. Along the way he tells stories of his adventure and the luck along the way that shaped the company.” £25/$30. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
The Routledge Handbook of Geospatial Technologies and Society
Out this week: The Routledge Handbook of Geospatial Technologies and Society (Routledge), a collection of essays edited by Alexander J. Kent and Doug Specht. “Contributors reflect on the changing role of geospatial technologies in society and highlight new applications that represent transformative directions in society and point towards new horizons. Furthermore, they encourage dialogue across disciplines to bring new theoretical perspectives on geospatial technologies, from neurology to heritage studies.” Via Matthew Edney, who’s got a chapter in it on pre-1884 geospatial technology. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
Kent previously co-edited The Routledge Handbook of Mapping and Cartography (Routledge, 2017) with Peter Vujakovic (previously), and co-authored The Red Atlas (University of Chicago Press, 2017) with John Davies (my review).
The Deepest Map
Out today from HarperCollins (and Goose Lane in Canada): The Deepest Map: The High-Stakes Race to Chart the World’s Oceans by Laura Trethewey. “Scientists, investors, militaries, and private explorers are competing in this epic venture to obtain an accurate reading of this vast terrain and understand its contours and environment. In The Deepest Map, Laura Trethewey chronicles this race to the bottom. Following global efforts around the world, she documents Inuit-led crowdsourced mapping in the Arctic as climate change alters the landscape, a Texas millionaire’s efforts to become the first man to dive to the deepest point in each ocean, and the increasingly fraught question of whether and how to mine the deep sea.” Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
History of Cartography Project’s Fourth Volume Now Available Online
The History of Cartography Project’s fourth volume, Cartography in the European Enlightenment, is now available online for free download in PDF format. This book, edited by Matthew Edney and Mary Sponberg Pedley, came out in hardcover in the depths of the pandemic; free online access a few years after publication follows the precedent of previous volumes in the series.
This means that all five volumes that have been published to date can be downloaded for free (here). The remaining volume—volume five, Cartography in the Nineteenth Century—is in preparation. When that final book is published, it will close out a project that has taken more than four decades to come to fruition.
Previously: Forty Years of the History of Cartography Project; The History of Cartography’s Fourth Volume, Now (Almost) Out; History of Cartography Project Updates.
A Huge, Super-Expensive Edition of the Cassini Map
French publisher Conspiration Éditions has announced the forthcoming publication of a huge, luxury edition of the Cassini map. The 18th-century map is, famously, the first comprehensive map of France, and the first map to be based on triangulation. Their edition is enormous: at 56 × 65 cm (or 22 × 25.6 inches), it’s big enough to show each plate as a two-page spread at full size (Conspiration is reprinting a hand-coloured original apparently owned by Marie-Antoinette). At 15 kg (33 lbs), the book is also pretty heavy, and includes a foldable stand. It is, however, not remotely cheap: it’s being published in a limited edition of 900 copies that will be released for sale in April 2024 at the rather stunning price of €2,400; 300 copies can be purchased before the end of October 2023 at the low, low subscription price of €1,800.
Previously: La Carte de Cassini.
New Books on Early Modern Maps
Three books that have come out or are coming out this year that deal with maps of early modern Europe:
Navigations: The Portuguese Discoveries and the Renaissance by Malyn Newitt (Reaktion, 24 Apr). “Navigations re-examines the Portuguese voyages of discovery by placing them in their medieval and Renaissance settings. It shows how these voyages grew out of a crusading ethos, as well as long-distance trade with Asia and Africa and developments in map-making and ship design. The slave trade, the diaspora of the Sephardic Jews and the intercontinental spread of plants and animals gave these voyages long-term global significance.” £25/$40. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
Here Begins the Dark Sea: Venice, a Medieval Monk, and the Creation of the Most Accurate Map of the World by Meredith F. Small (Pegasus, 6 Jun). A book about the famous Fra Mauro map. “Acclaimed anthropologist Meredith F. Small reveals how Fra Mauro’s mappamundi made cartography into a science rather than a practice based on religion and ancient myths.” $29. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
Frames that Speak: Cartouches on Early Modern Maps by Chet Van Duzer (Brill, 25 May ebook, 19 Jul print). I’ve been following Van Duzer’s work on horror vacui, the lack of empty spaces on maps, for some time (1, 2); that work seems to be taken up by at least the first chapter on this new book on cartouches, which is available for free as an open-access download. “This lavishly illustrated book is the first systematic exploration of cartographic cartouches, the decorated frames that surround the title, or other text or imagery, on historic maps. It addresses the history of their development, the sources cartographers used in creating them, and the political, economic, historical, and philosophical messages their symbols convey. Cartouches are the most visually appealing parts of maps, and also spaces where the cartographer uses decoration to express his or her interests—so they are key to interpreting maps. The book discusses thirty-three cartouches in detail, which range from 1569 to 1821, and were chosen for the richness of their imagery.” $144. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
More: Map Books of 2023.
The Map Books of 2023 page is finally live. I typically have it up closer to the start of the year, but this hasn’t been a typical year, so it’s taken a while to get to. As always, please let me know if you know of a book that came out or is coming out this year—anything to do with cartography, maps or a related subject—that ought to be listed on this page; I’ll need a publication date and something to link to.
Review: Atlas of Design, Vol. 6
Late last year I received, as a review copy, the sixth volume of the Atlas of Design. Things being what they are around here, there has been somewhat of a gap between receiving it, reading it, and saying something about it. But it’s worth saying something about that volume now, and the Atlas of Design in general, for at least one small reason I’ll get to in a moment.
I’ve mentioned the Atlas of Design series before, but it’s worth introducing it properly. Published every two years since 2012 by the North American Cartographic Information Society, the Atlas of Design is powered by volunteer editors and contributor submissions. Nobody’s getting paid for working on or appearing in these volumes—though it must be said that many of these maps are commercial ventures (posters available for sale at the mapper’s website) or works for hire (National Geographic and the Washington Post are represented in volume six), so the mapmakers aren’t doing this just for the exposure.