The Geographical Imagination in America, 1880-1950

The Geographical Imagination in America, 1880-1950
Author: Susan Schulten
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780226740560

Schulten examines four enduring institutions of learning that produced some of the most influential sources of geographic knowledge in modern history: maps and atlases, the National Geographic Society, the American university, and public schools."--BOOK JACKET.


A History of America in 100 Maps

A History of America in 100 Maps
Author: Susan Schulten
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2018-09-21
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 022645861X

Throughout its history, America has been defined through maps. Whether made for military strategy or urban reform, to encourage settlement or to investigate disease, maps invest information with meaning by translating it into visual form. They capture what people knew, what they thought they knew, what they hoped for, and what they feared. As such they offer unrivaled windows onto the past. In this book Susan Schulten uses maps to explore five centuries of American history, from the voyages of European discovery to the digital age. With stunning visual clarity, A History of America in 100 Maps showcases the power of cartography to illuminate and complicate our understanding of the past. Gathered primarily from the British Library’s incomparable archives and compiled into nine chronological chapters, these one hundred full-color maps range from the iconic to the unfamiliar. Each is discussed in terms of its specific features as well as its larger historical significance in a way that conveys a fresh perspective on the past. Some of these maps were made by established cartographers, while others were made by unknown individuals such as Cherokee tribal leaders, soldiers on the front, and the first generation of girls to be formally educated. Some were tools of statecraft and diplomacy, and others were instruments of social reform or even advertising and entertainment. But when considered together, they demonstrate the many ways that maps both reflect and influence historical change. Audacious in scope and charming in execution, this collection of one hundred full-color maps offers an imaginative and visually engaging tour of American history that will show readers a new way of navigating their own worlds.


Mapping the Nation

Mapping the Nation
Author: Susan Schulten
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2012-06-29
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0226740706

“A compelling read” that reveals how maps became informational tools charting everything from epidemics to slavery (Journal of American History). In the nineteenth century, Americans began to use maps in radically new ways. For the first time, medical men mapped diseases to understand and prevent epidemics, natural scientists mapped climate and rainfall to uncover weather patterns, educators mapped the past to foster national loyalty among students, and Northerners mapped slavery to assess the power of the South. After the Civil War, federal agencies embraced statistical and thematic mapping in order to profile the ethnic, racial, economic, moral, and physical attributes of a reunified nation. By the end of the century, Congress had authorized a national archive of maps, an explicit recognition that old maps were not relics to be discarded but unique records of the nation’s past. All of these experiments involved the realization that maps were not just illustrations of data, but visual tools that were uniquely equipped to convey complex ideas and information. In Mapping the Nation, Susan Schulten charts how maps of epidemic disease, slavery, census statistics, the environment, and the past demonstrated the analytical potential of cartography, and in the process transformed the very meaning of a map. Today, statistical and thematic maps are so ubiquitous that we take for granted that data will be arranged cartographically. Whether for urban planning, public health, marketing, or political strategy, maps have become everyday tools of social organization, governance, and economics. The world we inhabit—saturated with maps and graphic information—grew out of this sea change in spatial thought and representation in the nineteenth century, when Americans learned to see themselves and their nation in new dimensions.


Picturing America

Picturing America
Author: Stephen J. Hornsby
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2017-03-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 022638618X

Instructive, amusing, colorful—pictorial maps have been used and admired since the first medieval cartographer put pen to paper depicting mountains and trees across countries, people and objects around margins, and sea monsters in oceans. More recent generations of pictorial map artists have continued that traditional mixture of whimsy and fact, combining cartographic elements with text and images and featuring bold and arresting designs, bright and cheerful colors, and lively detail. In the United States, the art form flourished from the 1920s through the 1970s, when thousands of innovative maps were mass-produced for use as advertisements and decorative objects—the golden age of American pictorial maps. Picturing America is the first book to showcase this vivid and popular genre of maps. Geographer Stephen J. Hornsby gathers together 158 delightful pictorial jewels, most drawn from the extensive collections of the Library of Congress. In his informative introduction, Hornsby outlines the development of the cartographic form, identifies several representative artists, describes the process of creating a pictorial map, and considers the significance of the form in the history of Western cartography. Organized into six thematic sections, Picturing America covers a vast swath of the pictorial map tradition during its golden age, ranging from “Maps to Amuse” to “Maps for War.” Hornsby has unearthed the most fascinating and visually striking maps the United States has to offer: Disney cartoon maps, college campus maps, kooky state tourism ads, World War II promotional posters, and many more. This remarkable, charming volume’s glorious full-color pictorial maps will be irresistible to any map lover or armchair traveler.


The Red Atlas

The Red Atlas
Author: John Davies
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2017-10-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 022638960X

The “utterly fascinating” untold story of Soviet Russia’s global military mapping program—featuring many of the surprising maps that resulted (Marina Lewycka, author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian). From 1950 to 1990, the Soviet Army conducted a global topographic mapping program, creating large-scale maps for much of the world that included a diversity of detail that would have supported a full range of military planning. For big cities like New York, Washington, D.C., and London to towns like Pontiac, MI, and Galveston, TX, the Soviets gathered enough information to create street-level maps. The information on these maps ranged from the locations of factories and ports to building heights, road widths, and bridge capacities. Some of the detail suggests early satellite technology, while other specifics, like detailed depictions of depths and channels around rivers and harbors, could only have been gained by Soviet spies on the ground. The Red Atlas includes over 350 extracts from these incredible Cold War maps, exploring their provenance and cartographic techniques as well as what they can tell us about their makers and the Soviet initiatives that were going on all around us.


Geography and Vision

Geography and Vision
Author: Denis Cosgrove
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2012-11-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0857732005

Leading geographer Denis Cosgrove provides a series of personal reflections on the complex connections between seeing, imagining and representing the world geographically. In a series of eloquent essays he draws upon pictorial images - including maps, sketches, cartoons, paintings, and photographs - to explore and elaborate upon the many and varied ways in which the vast and varied earth, and at times the heavens beyond, have been both imagined and represented as a place of human habitation. The essays include reflections upon geographical discovery; urban cartography and utopian visions; ideas of landscape and the shaping of America; wilderness and masculinity; conceptions of the Pacific; and the imaginative grip of the Equator. Extensively illustrated, this engaging work reveals the richness of the geographical imagination as expressed over the past five centuries.


How to Lie with Maps

How to Lie with Maps
Author: Mark Monmonier
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2018-04-13
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 022643608X

An updated edition of the “humorous, informative and perceptive” guide to how maps can lead us astray (Toronto Globe and Mail). An instant classic when first published in 1991, How to Lie with Maps revealed how the choices mapmakers make—consciously or unconsciously—mean that every map inevitably presents only one of many possible stories about the places it depicts. The principles Mark Monmonier outlined back then remain true today, despite significant technological changes in the making and use of maps. The introduction and spread of digital maps and mapping software, however, have added new wrinkles to the ever-evolving landscape of modern mapmaking. Fully updated for the digital age, this new edition of How to Lie with Maps examines the myriad ways that technology offers new opportunities for cartographic mischief, deception, and propaganda. While retaining the same brevity, range, and humor as its predecessors, this third edition includes significant updates throughout as well as new chapters on image maps, prohibitive cartography, and online maps. It also includes an expanded section of color images and an updated list of sources for further reading. Praise for previous editions of How to Lie with Maps “Will leave you much better defended against cheap atlases, shoddy journalism, unscrupulous advertisers, predatory special-interest groups, and others who may use or abuse maps at your expense.” —Christian Science Monitor


A History of the Second World War in 100 Maps

A History of the Second World War in 100 Maps
Author: Jeremy Black
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2020-11-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 022675765X

The First World War was marked by an exceptional expansion in the use and production of military cartography. But World War II took things even further, employing maps, charts, reconnaissance, and the systematic recording and processing of geographical and topographical information on an unprecedented scale. As Jeremy Black—one of the world’s leading military and cartographic historians—convincingly shows in this lavish full-color book, it is impossible to understand the events and outcomes of the Second World War without deep reference to mapping at all levels. In World War II, maps themselves became the weapons. A History of the Second World War in 100 Maps traces how military cartography developed from simply recording and reflecting history to having a decisive impact on events of a global scale. Drawing on one hundred key maps from the unparalleled collections of the British Library and other sources—many of which have never been published in book form before--Jeremy Black takes us from the prewar mapping programs undertaken by both Germany and the United Kingdom in the mid-1930s through the conflict’s end a decade later. Black shows how the development of maps led directly to the planning of the complex and fluid maneuvers that defined the European theater in World War II: for example, aerial reconnaissance photography allowed for the charting of beach gradients and ocean depths in the runup to the D-Day landings, and the subsequent troop movements at Normandy would have been impossible without the help of situation maps and photos. In the course of the conflict, both in Europe and the Pacific, the realities of climate, terrain, and logistics—recorded on maps—overcame the Axis powers. Maps also became propaganda tools as the pages of Time outlined the directions of the campaigns and the Allies dropped maps from their aircraft. ​ In this thrilling and unique book, Jeremy Black blends his singular cartographic and military expertise into a captivating overview of World War II from the air, sea, and sky, making clear how fundamental maps were to every aspect of this unforgettable global conflict.


The Geography of the Imagination

The Geography of the Imagination
Author: Guy Davenport
Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher
Total Pages: 404
Release: 1997
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9781567920802

In the 40 essays that constitute this collection, Guy Davenport, one of America's major literary critics, elucidates a range of literary history, encompassing literature, art, philosophy and music, from the ancients to the grand old men of modernism.