There is a great review of Mark Monmonier's new book at the H-Net Review
network. To read the review in its entirety, go here:
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=30716

snap shot below
-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        Review: Harris on Mark S. Monmonier. No Dig, No Fly, No Go:
How Maps Restrict and Control.
Date:   Thu, 8 Jul 2010 17:05:35 -0600
From:   Otterstrom- HistGeog <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To:
To:



From: Robert J. Mayhew [[log in to unmask]]
Date sent: 7 Jul 2010

Mark S. Monmonier.  No Dig, No Fly, No Go: How Maps Restrict and Control.  Chicago  University of Chicago Press, 2010.  xiii + 242 pp.
 $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-226-53467-1; $18.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-226-53468-8.

Reviewed by Richard Harris (University of Bristol) Published on H-HistGeog (July, 2010) Commissioned by Robert J. Mayhew

Maps: Restricting and Enabling

Had this book arrived without its cover, the author would have remained obvious. This is a Mark Monmonier text through and through:
well written, engaging, mildly provocative, quirky at times, lavishly illustrated (albeit in black and white) and underpinned by a dry but generous sense of humor. It is full of interesting examples of how maps are used to naturalize claims to territory and then to restrict access.

As it happens my copy came fully intact with the blurb describing it as "a worthy successor to his critically acclaimed _How to Lie with Maps_." Well, yes, it is a successor and its predecessor has been critically acclaimed (rightly so). There is also a return to previous themes, most notably an expanded discussion of gerrymandering boundaries for political gain (with the passing note that its namesake, Governor Elbridge Gerry, has been somewhat unfairly associated with the process).

However, as Monmonier himself writes, the new book is better understood as the fourth in a series of short cartographic histories exploring the evolution and impact of a map symbol or feature. The first, _Rhumb Lines and Map Wars_ (2004) is about grid lines. _From Square Tit to Whorehouse Meadow _(2006) is about standardized place and feature names. _Coast Lines_ (2008) is about how mapmakers frame the world and chart environmental change. In his new book Monmonier turns to "prohibitive cartography"--how cartography works as a mapping tool, leading to "our unconscious acceptance of cartographic boundaries of all types as natural, beneficial, and worth obeying"
(p. xii).

The key point is that boundaries matter. They delimit and (literally) ground a claim to territorial possession. By doing so they shout to would-be trespassers, "keep out!" This is true at multiple scales.

Monmonier begins by looking at property properties, how they have been surveyed and marked, and the challenges of recovering a boundary described by historical landmarks. A discussion of frontier lands shows how large tracts of the United States were carved into apparently regular grids but ones that converge towards the North Pole. Hence the phenomenon of otherwise long and straight roads having occasional and seemingly inexplicably bends: they are due to the offset of land boundaries, correcting for converging meridians.


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Citation: Richard Harris. Review of Monmonier, Mark S., _No Dig, No Fly, No Go: How Maps Restrict and Control_. H-HistGeog, H-Net Reviews. July, 2010.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=30716

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.