The Best Map History Books of the Decade

It’s late December and the media industry has been busy churning out the lists of the best (and worst) Xs of 2019 and also, because it’s 2019, they are also generating lists of the best (and worst) Xs of the decade. (No arguments, please, that the next decade doesn’t actually start until 1 Jan 2021.)

I thought, therefore, of drumming up a list of the best works in map history of the 2010s, by category. All of the following is my opinion, so the categories are rather odd. So, here goes…

Best popular books of the one-map-&-one-page of text format

The popular market for books on map history showed no sign of drying up over the 2010s, especially in the format pioneered by Peter Barber’s The Map Book (2005). Two books stand out to me as being well-curated and well-written:

Bryars, Tim, and Tom Harper. A History of the Twentieth Century in 100 Maps. Chicago: University of Chicago Press for the British Library, 2014.

Schulten, Susan. A History of America in 100 Maps. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018.

Best Book about Maps and Cats

Just sneaking into consideration:

Flinders, Matthew, Philippa Sandall, and Gillian Dooley. Trim, the Cartographer’s Cat: The Ship’s Cat Who Helped Flinders Map Australia. London: Adland Coles, 2019.

Best Book for Which I Wrote the Introduction

This one is easy:

Dym, Jordana, and Karl Offen, eds. Mapping Latin America: A Cartographic Reader. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

Best Book on the City in Which I Grew Up

Another easy one. Derived from the author’s work on the best-attended exhibition put on by the British Library, and then some, it skillfully intertwines the mapping and the city’s history:

Barber, Peter. London: A History in Maps. London: London Topographical Society in association with the British Library, 2012.

Best Historical Atlas

I don’t keep close track of the many atlases made of the past, but the best of the decade was undoubtedly

Hornsby, Stephen J., Richard W. Judd, and Michael J. Hermann, eds. Historical Atlas of Maine. Orono: University of Maine Press, 2015.

Best Books about Maps Created on Unusual/Uncommon Materials

By unusual/uncommon I mean materials other than paper, vellum, and their digital cognates. Two works stand out:

McCalmont, Melanie Schleeter. A Wilderness of Rocks: The Impact of Relief Models on Data Science. Victoria, B.C.: Friesen Press, 2015.

Tyner, Judith A. Stitching the World: Embroidered Maps and Women’s Geographical Education. London: Ashgate, 2015.

Best Full-Color Books on Eighteenth-Century Manuscript Topographical Mapping

I am a huge fan of early modern manuscript maps of landscape, so these books just spoke to me:

Blond, Stéphane. L’Atlas de Trudaine: Pouvoirs, cartes et savoirs techniques au siècle des lumières. Paris: Éditions du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 2014.

Orgeix, Émilie d’ and Isabelle Warmoes. Atlas militaires manuscrits (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles): Villes et territoires des ingénieurs du roi. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France/Ministère des Armées, 2017.

Best Inter-Continental Kiss

In the spirit of pop-culture awards shows (“Best On-Screen Kiss,” etc.), I think of a couple of the maps by Opicinus in which Europe and Africa are (appear to be) kissing:

Whittington, Karl. Body-Worlds: Opicinus de Canistris and the Medieval Cartographic Imagination. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2014.

Most Graphically Luscious Books on Maps and Religion

I am just in awe of how these authors got their academic publishers to do such color:

Huntington, Eric. Creating the Universe: Depictions of the Cosmos in Himalayan Buddhism. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018.

Ramaswamy, Sumathi. The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010.