Hi all-

I'm the Review Editor for the "Atlas and Book Review" section of the WAML Information Bulletin. I'm seeking reviewers for the following seven books (descriptions for these books are taken from Amazon or Esri Press website):



Mapping the Cold War: Cartography and the Framing of America's International Power, by Timothy Barne, April 13, 2015, The University of North Carolina Press:

In this fascinating history of Cold War cartography, Timothy Barney considers maps as central to the articulation of ideological tensions between American national interests and international aspirations. Barney argues that the borders, scales, projections, and other conventions of maps prescribed and constrained the means by which foreign policy elites, popular audiences, and social activists navigated conflicts between North and South, East and West. Maps also influenced how identities were formed in a world both shrunk by advancing technologies and marked by expanding and shifting geopolitical alliances and fissures. Pointing to the necessity of how politics and values were "spatialized" in recent U.S. history, Barney argues that Cold War-era maps themselves had rhetorical lives that began with their conception and production and played out in their circulation within foreign policy circles and popular media. Reflecting on the ramifications of spatial power during the period, Mapping the Cold War ultimately demonstrates that even in the twenty-first century, American visions of the world--and the maps that account for them--are inescapably rooted in the anxieties of that earlier era.



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Atlas of Islamic History, by Peter Sluglett, Andrew Currie, January 9, 2015, Routledge:

This Atlas provides the main outlines of Islamic history from the immediate pre-Islamic period until the end of 1920, that is, before most parts of the Muslim world became sovereign nation states. Each map is accompanied by a text that contextualises, explains, and expands upon the map, and are fully cross-referenced. All of the maps are in full colour: 18 of them are double-page spreads, and 25 are single page layouts. This is an atlas of Islamic, not simply Arab or Middle Eastern history; hence it covers the entire Muslim world, including Spain, North, West and East Africa, the Indian sub-continent, Central Asia and South-East Asia. Using the most up to date cartographic and innovative design techniques, the maps break new ground in illuminating the history of Islam.



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The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps, by Benjamin B. Olshin, October 29, 2014, University Of Chicago Press:

In the thirteenth century, Italian merchant and explorer Marco Polo traveled from Venice to the far reaches of Asia, a journey he chronicled in a narrative titled Il Milione, later known as The Travels of Marco Polo. While Polo's writings would go on to inspire the likes of Christopher Columbus, scholars have long debated their veracity. Some have argued that Polo never even reached China, while others believe that he came as far as the Americas. Now, there's new evidence for this historical puzzle: a very curious collection of fourteen little-known maps and related documents said to have belonged to the family of Marco Polo himself.
In The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps, historian of cartography Benjamin B. Olshin offers the first credible book-length analysis of these artifacts, charting their course from obscure origins in the private collection of Italian-American immigrant Marcian Rossi in the 1930s; to investigations of their authenticity by the Library of Congress, J. Edgar Hoover, and the FBI; to the work of the late cartographic scholar Leo Bagrow; to Olshin's own efforts to track down and study the Rossi maps, all but one of which are in the possession of Rossi's great-grandson Jeffrey Pendergraft. Are the maps forgeries, facsimiles, or modernized copies? Did Marco Polo's daughters-whose names appear on several of the artifacts-preserve in them geographic information about Asia first recorded by their father? Or did they inherit maps created by him? Did Marco Polo entrust the maps to Admiral Ruggero Sanseverino, who has links to Rossi's family line? Or, if the maps have no connection to Marco Polo, who made them, when, and why?



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Cartographic Traditions in East Asian Maps, by Richard A. Pegg, September, 2014, University of Hawaii Press:

Maps are the manifestation of an intellectual construct of physical and metaphysical environments. They are rich cultural objects presenting and transmitting information about time and place of production. A map is not neutral - it is an interactive, constructed representation of space as perceived and presented by its maker and then interpreted by the viewer. Maps thus reveal methodological relationships between artistic and scientific approaches, aesthetics and functionality and form and content in the context of visual culture. And given their subjective nature, maps reproduce the views or perspectives of their makers. Cartographic Traditions in East Asian Maps is focused on a group of maps from the MacLean Collection, one of the world's largest private collections of maps. The maps presented here are in a wide range of medium and formats including screens, wall maps, sheet maps, pocket maps, case maps and map plates. They are eighteenth and nineteenth-century maps from the late Qing dynasty in China, the Joseon dynasty in Korea and the Edo and Meiji periods in Japan illustrating late traditions in the region's history. Each of the three chapters examines one of the three principal regions of East Asia and begins with overall regional maps, then local city maps of Beijing, Edo, Yokohama and Kyoto, respectively, or the eight provinces of Korea. This book provides some of the particular practices and relationships between text and image in East Asian map making that are unique in world cartography. Often particular map making characteristics are not recognized as unique within their own cultural contexts, and so it is only through the process of comparing and contrasting that these qualities emerge. This survey of selected maps proves extremely useful in revealing certain similarities and distinctive differences in the representations of space, both real and imagined, in early modern cartographic traditions of China, Korea and Japan. In addition, as this was a period that Western nations were applying pressure on Asia to open for trade, religion and diplomacy, the introduction of Western cartographic methodologies during the early modern period of East Asia, along with some of the resulting changes, is also discussed.



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Modernizing American Land Records: Order upon Chaos, by Earl F. Epstein, Bernard J. Niemann Jr., 2014, Esri Press:

Modernizing American Land Records: Order upon Chaos presents a design for a modern American Land Records System (ALRS) that provides material about both the nature and extent of land interests. This book discusses the history of American land concepts, land governance, and land records systems and their use. These institutional aspects are considered along with the nature and extent of location-oriented land data systems such as geographic and land information systems (GIS/LIS). The institutional and technical aspects are brought together in the design of a modern ALRS that is consistent with current attitudes, practices, and technological development.



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Mapping the Nation: Building a More Resilient Future, 2015, Esri Press:

Mapping the Nation: Building a More Resilient Future is a collection of GIS maps illustrating the many ways that federal government agencies rely on GIS analysis to build stronger, more resilient communities and help make the world a better place. Pulled from a broad range of departments, maps included in the book demonstrate how the technology can be used to evaluate, plan and respond to social, economic, and environmental concerns at local, regional, national, and global levels. These examples on topics such as green government, economic recovery and sustainability, climate protection, and more show how government agencies use GIS to facilitate initiatives, improve transparency, and deliver strong business models.



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Mapping the Nation: Supporting Decisions that Govern a People, 2015, Esri Press:

Mapping the Nation: Supporting Decisions that Govern a People is a collection of GIS maps illustrating the many ways that federal government agencies rely on GIS analysis to help make the world a better place, focusing on return on investment. Pulled from a broad range of agencies, maps included in the book demonstrate how the technology can be used to evaluate and respond to social, economic, and environmental concerns at local, regional, national, and global levels. These examples-on topics such as green government, economic recovery and sustainability, climate protection, and more-show how government agencies use GIS to facilitate initiatives, improve transparency, and deliver strong business models.



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The deadline for these reviews would be in about 6 weeks (I will send you more specifics if wind up reviewing one of these books). Please contact me off-list if you're interested and I'll send you the book, the reviewer guidelines, and a due date.

Ilene

Ilene Raynes
Jerry Crail Johnson Earth Sciences and Map Library
University of Colorado Boulder
184 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309
303-492-4487
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