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Maps: Finding Our Place in the World ReviewThis book is a catalog for an extraordinary exhibition of over 130 maps at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (in collaboration with The Newberry Library).
Some of my favorites include:
Photographic road maps produced for the first automobilists. Page by page the photographs show country lanes, farmhouses and churches with arrows indicating the correct route.
The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad of 1906, which shows routes of competing railroads in thin, spindly lines or not at all.
Harry Beck's great 1933 map of the London Underground, which shows none of London's geography except for the Thames.
The 1566 map by Giovanni Paolo Cimerlini showing religious divisions in the shape of a heart joined at the North Pole in the center of the map. ("The heart is such a common icon of love. It is a hopeful sign that there is possibility of universal harmony. The map came at a time when reformation is tearing apart the Christian world and there's conflict with Islam. There were advanced thinkers who were thinking we can all get along. This map is saying, 'Hey, we're all in this together.' It's an expression of hope.")
Others include a 3,500-year-old clay tablet detailing walls, gates and palaces in the town of Nippur in what is now Iraq; three colored drawings by Leonardo da Vinci showing the typography of Europe; the map Charles Lindbergh carried with him on his history-making flight from New York to Paris annotated in his own handwriting; drawings by J.R.R. Tolkien of his fictional Middle-earth; and a deerskin map drawn by members of an American Indian tribe, where circles connected by lines indicate political ties among communities.
Each of the maps is well described, and the individual map descriptions are enhanced by the introductions to each of the seven chapters. They include: "Finding Our Way", James R. Akerman, "Mapping the World", Denis Cosgrove; "Mapping Parts of the World", Matthew H. Edney; "Mapping American History", Susan Schulten; "Visualizing Nature and Society", Michael Friendly and Gilles Palsky; "Mapping Imaginary Worlds", Ricardo Padrón; and "Consuming Maps", Diane Dillon. There is also a list of references, a comprehensive bibliography and an excellent index.
Both the Field and the Walters have very informative websites devoted to the exhibition, with many of the maps illustrated online. (Both institutes usually keep their exhibits online for several years after the exhibit closes.)
Excellent as the online exhibits are, however, holding the book and studying the maps is much more rewarding.
Robert C. Ross 2008Maps: Finding Our Place in the World OverviewMaps are universal forms of communication, easily understood and appreciated regardless of culture or language. This truly magisterial book introduces readers to the widest range of maps ever considered in one volume: maps from different time periods and a variety of cultures; maps made for divergent purposes and depicting a range of environments; and maps that embody the famous, the important, the beautiful, the groundbreaking, or the amusing. Built around the functions of maps—the kinds of things maps do and have done—Maps confirms the vital role of maps throughout history in commerce, art, literature, and national identity.The book begins by examining the use of maps for wayfinding, revealing that even maps as common and widely used as these are the product of historical circumstances and cultural differences. The second chapter considers maps whose makers employed the smallest of scales to envision the broadest of human stages—the world, the heavens, even the act of creation itself. The next chapter looks at maps that are, literally, at the opposite end of the scale from cosmological and world maps—maps that represent specific parts of the world and provide a close-up view of areas in which their makers lived, worked, and moved.Having shown how maps help us get around and make sense of our greater and lesser worlds, Maps then turns to the ways in which certain maps can be linked to particular events in history, exploring how they have helped Americans, for instance, to understand their past, cope with current events, and plan their national future. The fifth chapter considers maps that represent data from scientific instruments, population censuses, and historical records. These maps illustrate, for example, how diseases spread, what the ocean floor looks like, and how the weather is tracked and predicted. Next comes a turn to the imaginary, featuring maps that depict entire fictional worlds, from Hell to Utopia and from Middle Earth to the fantasy game World of Warcraft. The final chapter traces the origins of map consumption throughout history and ponders the impact of cartography on modern society.A companion volume to the most ambitious exhibition on the history of maps ever mounted in North America, Maps will challenge readers to stretch conventional thought about what constitutes a map and how many different ways we can understand graphically the environment in which we live. Collectors, historians, mapmakers and users, and anyone who has ever "gotten lost" in the lines and symbols of a map will find much to love and learn from in this book.
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