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 books (descriptions for these books are taken from Amazon):
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Sidewalk City: Remapping Public Space in Ho Chi Minh City, Annette Miae Kim, 2015, University Of Chicago Press, 978-0226119229.
For most, the term “public space” conjures up images of large, open areas: community centers for meetings and social events; the ancient Greek agora for political
debates; green parks for festivals and recreation. In many of the world’s major cities, however, public spaces like these are not a part of the everyday lives of the public. Rather, business and social lives have always been conducted along main roads and
sidewalks. With increasing urban growth and density, primarily from migration and immigration, rights to the sidewalk are being hotly contested among pedestrians, street vendors, property owners, tourists, and governments around the world.
With Sidewalk City, Annette Miae Kim provides the first multidisciplinary case study of sidewalks in a distinctive geographical area. She focuses on Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam, a rapidly growing and evolving city that throughout its history, her multicultural residents have built up alternative legitimacies and norms about how the sidewalk should be used. Based on fieldwork over 15 years, Kim developed methods of spatial
ethnography to overcome habitual seeing, and recorded both the spatial patterns and the social relations of how the city’s vibrant sidewalk life is practiced.
In Sidewalk City, she transforms this data into an imaginative array of maps, progressing through a primer of critical cartography, to unveil new insights about the
importance and potential of this quotidian public space. This richly illustrated and fascinating study of Ho Chi Minh City’s sidewalks shows us that it is possible to have an aesthetic sidewalk life that is inclusive of multiple publics’ aspirations and livelihoods,
particularly those of migrant vendors.
Capitalism and Cartography in the Dutch Golden Age, Elizabeth A. Sutton, 2015, University Of Chicago Press, 978-0226254784.
In Capitalism and Cartography in the Dutch Golden Age, Elizabeth A. Sutton explores the fascinating but previously neglected history of corporate cartography during
the Dutch Golden Age, from ca. 1600 to 1650. She examines how maps were used as propaganda tools for the Dutch West India Company in order to encourage the commodification of land and an overall capitalist agenda.
Building her exploration around the central figure of Claes Jansz Vischer, an Amsterdam-based publisher closely tied to the Dutch West India Company, Sutton shows
how printed maps of Dutch Atlantic territories helped rationalize the Dutch Republic’s global expansion. Maps of land reclamation projects in the Netherlands, as well as the Dutch territories of New Netherland (now New York) and New Holland (Dutch Brazil),
reveal how print media were used both to increase investment and to project a common narrative of national unity. Maps of this era showed those boundaries, commodities, and topographical details that publishers and the Dutch West India Company merchants and
governing Dutch elite deemed significant to their agenda. In the process, Sutton argues, they perpetuated and promoted modern state capitalism.
Worldly Consumers: The Demand for Maps in Renaissance Italy, Genevieve Carlton, 2015, University Of Chicago Press, 978-0226255316.
Though the practical value of maps during the sixteenth century is well documented, their personal and cultural importance has been relatively underexamined. In Worldly
Consumers, Genevieve Carlton explores the growing availability of maps to private consumers during the Italian Renaissance and shows how map acquisition and display became central tools for constructing personal identity and impressing one’s peers.
Drawing on a variety of sixteenth-century sources, including household inventories, epigrams, dedications, catalogs, travel books, and advice manuals, Worldly Consumers
studies how individuals displayed different maps in their homes as deliberate acts of self-fashioning. One citizen decorated with maps of Bruges, Holland, Flanders, and Amsterdam to remind visitors of his military prowess, for example, while another hung maps
of cities where his ancestors fought or governed, in homage to his auspicious family history. Renaissance Italians turned domestic spaces into a microcosm of larger geographical places to craft cosmopolitan, erudite identities for themselves, creating a new
class of consumers who drew cultural capital from maps of the time.
A Historical Atlas of Tibet, Karl E. Ryavec, 2015, University of Chicago Press, 978-0226732442.
Cradled among the world’s highest mountains—and sheltering one of its most devout religious communities—Tibet is, for many of us, an ultimate destination, a place
that touches the heavens, a place only barely in our world, at its very end. In recent decades Western fascination with Tibet has soared, from the rise of Tibetan studies in academia to the rock concerts aimed at supporting its independence to the simple fact
that most of us—far from any base camp—know exactly what a sherpa is. And yet any sustained look into Tibet as a place, any attempt to find one’s way around its high plateaus and through its deep history, will yield this surprising fact: we have barely mapped
it. With this atlas, Karl E. Ryavec rights that wrong, sweeping aside the image of Tibet as Shangri-La and putting in its place a comprehensive vision of the region as it really is, a civilization in its own right. And the results are absolutely stunning.
The product of twelve years of research and eight more of mapmaking, A Historical Atlas of Tibet documents cultural and religious sites across the Tibetan Plateau
and its bordering regions from the Paleolithic and Neolithic times all the way up to today. It ranges through the five main periods in Tibetan history, offering introductory maps of each followed by details of western, central, and eastern regions. It beautifully
visualizes the history of Tibetan Buddhism, tracing its spread throughout Asia, with thousands of temples mapped, both within Tibet and across North China and Mongolia, all the way to Beijing. There are maps of major polities and their territorial administrations,
as well as of the kingdoms of Guge and Purang in western Tibet, and of Derge and Nangchen in Kham. There are town plans of Lhasa and maps that focus on history and language, on population, natural resources, and contemporary politics.
Extraordinarily comprehensive and absolutely gorgeous, this overdue volume will be a cornerstone in cartography, Asian studies, Buddhist studies, and in the libraries
or on the coffee tables of anyone who has ever felt the draw of the landscapes, people, and cultures of the highest place on Earth.
The Curious Map Book, Ashley Baynton-Williams, 2015, University Of Chicago Press, 978-0226237152.
Since that ancient day when the first human drew a line connecting Point A to Point B, maps have been understood as one of the most essential tools of communication.
Despite differences in language, appearance, or culture, maps are universal touchstones in human civilization.
Over the centuries, maps have served many varied purposes; far from mere guides for reaching a destination, they are unique artistic forms, aides in planning commercial
routes, literary devices for illuminating a story. Accuracy—or inaccuracy—of maps has been the make-or-break factor in countless military battles throughout history. They have graced the walls of homes, bringing prestige and elegance to their owners. They
track the mountains, oceans, and stars of our existence. Maps help us make sense of our worlds both real and imaginary—they bring order to the seeming chaos of our surroundings.
With The Curious Map Book, Ashley Baynton-Williams gathers an amazing, chronologically ordered variety of cartographic gems, mainly from the vast collection of the
British Library. He has unearthed a wide array of the whimsical and fantastic, from maps of board games to political ones, maps of the Holy Land to maps of the human soul. In his illuminating introduction, Baynton-Williams also identifies and expounds upon
key themes of map production, peculiar styles, and the commerce and collection of unique maps. This incredible volume offers a wealth of gorgeous illustrations for anyone who is cartographically curious.
The deadlines for these book reviews will be mid-June. Please contact me off-list if you are interested in reviewing these books.
Thanks!
Ilene
Ilene Raynes
Jerry Crail Johnson Earth Sciences & Map Library
Sciences Department, University Libraries
University of Colorado Boulder
184 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309
303-492-4487