Mapping as Process

My father-in-law forwarded me a piece published at Atlas Obscura back in 2020, entitled How a Secret Map Brought Down a Pirate Alliance on the Irish Coast: Now archaeologists are using it to search for evidence of clandestine activity.

It’s the Sunday of Labor Day weekend here in the USA, so an occasion to catch up on my planned second post about maps seen in Czechia during the recent trip to Prague for the International Conference on the History of Cartography.

Friday’s UN resolution about world map projections shows we are still being haunted by the legacy of Arno Peters As a map historian with a profound interest in the history of map projections and their use, I feel compelled to write about Friday’s UN resol…

Dear All: Please read Jonathan Crowe’s statement, published yesterday on his Map Room blog, about so-called artificial intelligence and maps.

I just returned from the wonderful city of Prague, in Czechia, where I participated in the 31st International Conference on the History of Cartography.

I was heavily featured in the brief spot about the Osher Map Library on CBS Sunday Morning, 17 May 2026.

The other year I curated a fun show (fun for me, at least) on chromolithography and maps for the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education.

Updates 14–15 March 2026: clarified Hayakawa’s contribution to the reconfiguration of Korzybski’s ideas and filled out the final comments re naivety of normative map concept a bit; inserted info about origin of Korzybski’s knowledge of Royce and reflexivi…

I just learned that the wonderful 1980 exhibition, Cartes et figures de la terre, spawned a surrealist film by the Chilean director Raúl Ruiz: Raúl Ruiz, dir., “Zig-Zag, le jeu de l’oie (Une fiction didactique à propos de la cartographie)” (Zig-Zag, Snakes

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I always have thought that the difference between “artifact” and “artefact” was one of English vs American spelling.

For your information, the Osher Map Library and its amazing team were interviewed the other week by Jackie Northam, who boiled down 3 hours of interviews into a 6:30 segment on this morning’s Weekend Edition Sunday.

It’s time for the annual list of books in map history, as well as some more conceptual and contemporary works that seem to me of relevance to map history.

Here is another vignette that I’ve had to cut from the WIP manuscript follows, much reconfigured for this stand-alone essay based on readily available resources.

Three things just dropped, or at least came to my attention.

I’ve been looking afresh at an old friend—Phelps & Watson’s New Map of the United States (New York: Phelps & Watson, 1860)—that demonstrates how portions of lithographic works can be easily modified, replaced, or moved around on the stone. click here for…

A student’s short commentary led me last Fall to a world map that includes an “analemma.”

I was interviewed by Larry Rayburn for the show Conversations with Larry Meiller, Wisconsin Public Radio (Ideas Network), last Monday, 14 July 2025.

Just a quick note to say that the monograph is now available in both ebook and print.

Here’s another thingy that I’ve had to cut for words.