Product Details
Format: Hardback Book
Pages: 400
Language: English
Size: 9" x 11.25"
Author: Edited by James R. Akerman and Robert W. Karrow Jr.
Comments: The Maps exhibition [and companion book] show us that the content of a given map is as much determined by culture, historical circumstances, and the interests of mapmakers and map users as it is by the geography that it attempts to depict. From the earliest maps on clay tablets to today's in-car navigation systems, maps tell us not just where we are but who we are. They are artifacts of, and witnesses to, history. And they continue to inspire use to wonder about out place in the world, and mark it for others to see.
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 scale 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.
About the Authors: James R. Akerman is director of the Newberry Library's Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for History of Cartography and editor of Cartographies of Travel and Navigation, also published by the University of Chicago Press. Robert W. Karrow Jr. is curator of special collections and maps in the Roger and Julie Baskes Department of Special Collections at the Newberry Library.
Publication Details
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Date of Publication: 2007
Published in Country: USA
Product Number: ISBN # 9780226010755
