Mapping Rats

From Time Magazine online: Mapping the Rats in New York City, by Christine Gorman.

Michael Mills, a veteran health inspector in New York City, helps create a map of the city you won't find in any guidebook: a rat map. That's right, a map of the New York neighborhoods that rodent populations call home.

The city's rat map was first introduced a year ago, with an intensive pilot program in the Bronx. Mills and other inspectors scoured the streets, building by building, cataloging rat hot spots — places that show so-called active rat signs, such as lived-in burrows, fresh droppings, telltale gnaw marks on plastic garbage bags — in an effort to target rodent-control measures more effectively. That geocoding information was entered into each inspector's handheld indexing computer and aggregated with similar data from all across the borough.

The New York City Department of Health and Hygiene provides a Rat Information Portal. From there you can pull up the Rat Map and retrieve rat data by borough, community district, zip code, or specific address.

Note the cute little rat icon that pops up when updating the map.

The most interesting book I have read on rats... OK, really the only book I have ever read on rats, is Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan. I enjoyed reading this book, and not just because of the great map cover:



Sullivan provides a compact history of rats in North America, but focuses primarily on New York City. His "field studies" include spending weeks in alleys observing the daily life of rats, and riding with "pest control technicians".

Publishers Weekly said, "Like any true New Yorker, Sullivan is able to convey simultaneously the feelings of disgust and awe that most city dwellers have for the scurrying masses that live among them."

HT to La Gringissima for the Time article.

The Next Country

The Next Country is a new collection of poetry by Idra Novey.

From the publisher: "In these powerful lyric poems, Idra Novey’s exploration of “country” extends beyond national boundaries into the countries of marriage and family, history and the unspoken, leading to a bold and imaginative reckoning of the self with the larger world."

To help convey this sensibility, the publisher used a piece by Matthew Cusick as the cover art. Cusick recycles old maps into this work.

From a 2006 exhibit at the Lisa Dent Gallery in San Francisco:

Matthew Cusick's newest paintings are a series of Texas highways traversing allegorical landscapes. For his second exhibition at Lisa Dent Gallery, Cusick has refined his technique of painting with maps, using them as a surrogate for paint - their inherent visual qualities of tone, value, and density employed to render the spatial image of the highways.

More examples of his cartographic art at: GeoCarta and Creative Mapping.

HT to La Gringissima

Michigan's Superior Peninsula

In his book, Lost States: Real Quests for American Statehood (discussed earlier this week) Michael Trinklein discussed the proposed State of Superior. Composed of Michigan's Upper Peninsula and portions of Northern Wisconsin, this state would presumably give the attention this region deserves, but is not getting from Lansing or Madison.



While the proposal gained some traction among "Yoopers" in the 1960s and `70s, it never came to a formal vote. Although they do have their own flag:



Some residents of the U.P. have an inflated view of their region's importance (as seen in this postcard):



(See other inflated views)

Additional map postcards with views of pleasant peninsulas:







Speaking of the Keweenaw Peninsula... For those of us of a certain age, who grew up in or near Detroit, we remember TV Weatherman, Sonny Elliot, and his special recognition of the Keweenaw Peninsula... ("Right... spweeeeet!... here...") Watch this video just past the two minute mark:





As you can see, his very first weathermap of Michigan lopped off the Keweenaw, and he had to add it on... In later years he made sure his (higher-tech) weather maps always had a detachable Keweenaw. He was also famous for coining new weather terms: cloudy and cool = "clool"!

Lost States

Last week I wrote about How the States Got Their Shapes. It turns out that the fifty states we know and love were not the only states that we might have seen... Over the course of our history, many other states have been proposed, only to be shot down or ignored.

Michael Trinklein has written a book about these failed attempts: Lost States: Real Quests for American Statehood. Heavily illustrated, this book tells the tale of would be state-builders and forgotten corners of geography, with wit and humor. Some of these attempts were very serious, some no more than pranks. Here are two examples:

The colonists who followed Daniel Boone through the Cumberland Gap in the 1770s called their coloney "Transylvania" (wich means "through the woods" and has nothing to do with vampires). After the start of the Revolutionary War, representatives went to the Continental Congress seeking recognition, but Virginia, who claimed most of that land, would hear nothing of it. Later, the area was rearranged into Kentucky and Tennessee.



Many new states have been proposed by carving up or rearranging already existing states. Often because residents of a region feel neglected by the rest of the state government. Folks in norther California often feel ignored and underappreciated by the rest of the state. The same goes for southern Oregon. In 1941 a new state, Jefferson (to keep Washington company?), was proposed. A cabal attempted to declare independence on December 4... but were overshadowed by the events of December 7.



For more samples, visit the author's website.

How the States Got Their Shapes

How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein. I read this book several months ago, and have been meaning to mention it here....

Each of the 51 chapters (it also includes the District of Columbia) discusses some history of each state, focusing primarily on the decisions that were made by kings, settlers and Congress when drawing borders around states.

This book answers some burning questions:

• Why West Virginia has a finger creeping up the side of Pennsylvania


• Why Michigan has an upper peninsula that isn't attached to Michigan


• Why some Hawaiian islands are not Hawaii


• Why Texas and California are so out sized, especially when so many Midwestern states are nearly identical in size


• Was Delaware really necessary?

Stein tells the stories of these states with humor. My favorite is the sad story of Maryland, and how they LOST every single border dispute over history (just look at it... a very unnaturally shaped state.):



As a resident of Ohio, I was particularly interested in the story of Connecticut and their claim to lands in the West. Like many of the original thirteen colonies, they claimed land stretching all the way to the Pacific. In most cases, it wasn't that they truly expected to govern that land, but they wanted the right to sell the acreage to settlers. Eventually they were obliged to relinquish they claim to half of Pennsylvania, and much of the territory in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois as Congress organized that area as part of the Northwest Ordinance:



However, Connecticut reserved the right to sell the land in what is now northeast Ohio. It was their "Western Reserve." I had often wondered where the Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland got their name.



My only criticism is the author's arrangement of the chapters. He chose to put the states in alphabetical order, which is fine if you are not reading the whole thing straight through, but want to find and refer to specific states. I would have preferred that he arranged them by regions. So many of the states have common histories of their borders (such as the 49th parallel and the Mason-Dixon Line). If arranged thematically, many of the chapters would not have needed to be so repetitive. Still, this book is a must for map and geography buffs.

#280

Mexico City

Yesterday I wrote about a new book, National Geographic Society Exploration Experience: The Heroic Exploits of the World's Greatest Explorers, that includes reproductions of historical maps inserted in pockets with nearly every article. One of the maps I enjoyed was this one, attibuted to Hernán Cortés, of Tenochtitlan, the capital city of the Aztecs.



It reminded me that I have not shared all of the map postcards I brought back from my trip to Mexico last August. (The others are here, here and here.)

Below is a map postcard of the Centro Histórico. Our hotel was on Avenida Cinco de Mayo, and the rooftop restaurant had a terrific view of the Metropolitan Cathedral and the Federal Building both on the Zócalo, a large central plaza. It was a short walk to many of the other important and interesting sights.



To get to other parts of the city, we did not hesitate to take the city's underground metro system. It was less expensive, sometimes quicker, and generally more safe, than taking a taxi.

National Geographic Exploration Experience

The good folks at National Geographic sent me a book that is both interesting and fun: National Geographic Society Exploration Experience: The Heroic Exploits of the World's Greatest Explorers, by Beau Riffenburgh. At first I thought it would simply be a rehash of all the famous explorers I learned about in school (Columbus, Magellan, Coronado and Champlain) and they are here, but also included are explorers of Australia, Siberia, Africa, Antarctica and the Arctic. But wait! There's more! When I opened this book, I became very excited, like a kid with his first pop-up book. Not only does each page offer historical and biographical information on each explorer, and the obligatory red, blue and black lines on maps tracing their routes of exploration, but nearly every page also includes an insert. Neatly devised pockets contain reproductions and facsimiles of maps, letters, drawings, treaties, journals and news articles:

Here is an example of the traditional exploration map found in the book. Different colored solid and dotted lines. Exploration of Australia! Now that's a chapter I missed in high school geography class:



Here are two examples of the inserts.

A sketch map drawn by Alexander von Humboldt, of part of the Orinoco River, in what is now Venezuela:



A map of the route taken by the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition through central Africa, redrawn for Henry Stanley after his return:



In addition to rich narrative, beautiful illustrations and intriguing inserts, this book also included a bonus CD-ROM with an additional 35 rare historical maps from the archives of the Royal Geographic Society.

Henry Stanley's 1875 hand drawn pencil sketch of Lake Victoria Nyanza:



A Tibetan picture map of the Mount Everest Range, from 1898, by Laurence Austine Waddell:



I love this book and I haven't even finished reading about all of the explorers... Highly recommended as a holiday gift for that history buff or map lover in your family.

The Mouse That Roared

The Mouse that Roared, a 1959 film starring Peter Sellers, based on the book by Leonard Wibberley, tells the story of the tiny, mostly forgotten country of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.



In the opening segment of the film, the narrator is trying to find the tiny country. Measuring no more than five miles (8 km) long and three miles (5 km) wide, the Duchy and lies in a fold in the Northern Alps, adjacent to France and Switzerland.



In order to resolve a budget deficit, the government of Duchess Gloriana XIII decides to declare war on the United States. They expect to lose of course, but expect their defeat to be followed by millions of dollars in foreign aid.



When the declaration of war is ignored, they send an invasion force to New York.



The filmmakers intersperse the scenes of this journey with map animations of their misadventures at sea. I just had some fun clipping these stills out of the video.



Without rehashing the entire plot, instead of losing, as ordered, the expiditionary force wins the war! Hilarity ensues. While not a map, this scene late in the film also caught my fancy. Regular readers of this blog know of my love for boardgames, so I was tickled by this scene where diplomats from Britain, France, the USSR and the United States, while waiting to cross the border, kill time by playing a boardgame:



The Mouse That Roared is an amusing little farce that showcases Peter Sellers understated comedic talent. Recommended.

Harry-est Town in America

This news is a bit "last year"... but it is the first time I heard of it, and I like the graphic... From Amazon.com:


The Harry-est Town in America

After months of tracking pre-orders of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Amazon.com can now reveal the Harry-est town in the country: Falls Church, VA! Residents of Falls Church ordered more copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows from Amazon.com per capita than any other town in America. As a result of Falls Church's "Harry-ness," Amazon.com is donating a $5,000 Amazon.com gift certificate to The Mary Riley Styles Public Library Foundation Trust of Falls Church.

Falls Church beat out Gig Harbor, WA, and two other Virginia towns--including Fairfax and Vienna--with Katy, TX, rounding out the top five. Media, PA, Issaquah, WA, Snohomish, WA, Doylestown, PA, and Fairport, NY, completed the top ten Harry-est Towns.

Amazon.com used the most recent U.S. Census data and included all U.S. towns and cities with a population of more than 5,000 people.

Roswell, Texas

Roswell, Texas, (by L. Neil Smith, Rex F. May, Scott Bieser, and Jen Zach) is a graphic novel that takes place in an "alternate universe" where Texas remained an independent republic after The Alamo. Fast-forward to 1947 and President Charles A. Lindbergh has dispatched some Texas Rangers (law enforcement officers, not baseball players) to Roswell, in West Texas, to investigate a reported crash of a flying saucer!

However, other countries are interested in getting there first. President Walter Disney of California and his Nazi allies, as well as the United States and the Franco-Mexican Empire are all interested in what can be found at the crash site.

For graphic novel and/or alt history fans, it is an amusing, fast-paced frolic. The story is full of actual historical figures as main characters or just a cameo appearance, including John Wayne, Lawrence of Albania (Arabia), Frank Sinatra, Lyndon B. Johnson and The Pope.

Only little tidbits of the "why and how" of this alternate timeline are revealed in the story, but I was first intriged by the map of the Federated States of Texas on the back cover (hightlighted below). The borders of this Republic of Texas are much larger than the State of Texas today, or even the territory of Texas that was wrested from Mexico in 1836 and 1848.

In little bits here and there throughout the story, the reader learns that in 1861, when the American Civil War started, Texas cut a deal with the United States. In exchange for Texan assitance putting down the rebellion, they were deeded most of Louisiana, Arkansas, and all or part of present day Missouri, Kanasas, Oklahoma and New Mexico.

While the scenario is a bit implausible, it is necessary to create the shoot-from-the-hip culture that exists in this Texas of 1947 (and 1964). Every Texas stereotype is enlarged for comedic effect. For instance, in Texas, all citizens are required to carry a handgun. You must have a permit to be exempted from this law...

Published by Big Head Press, the comic was originally serialized on their website, and can still be found there in full color.

Libros en Español

The beginning of my recent trip to Mexico was marred by flight delays and cancellations. I ended up stuck in the Indianapolis airport for nearly eight hours, and by the time I reached Dallas I had already finished the several magazines I brought along as reading material. At the Dallas airport I picked up a copy of Carl Hiaasen's latest novel, Nature Girl. Adventure, revenge and humor in the Florida Everglades; I recommend his work for light, fun reading.

That book lasted for a few days in Cuernavaca, but by the time we reached Mexico City, I had to go looking for bookstores. Generally, I cannot visit another city or country without checking out the bookstores anyway... but now I needed something to read, and in English! Most of the new book stores I found had very little in English, but then I found a street full of used book stores, only a few blocks away from the hotel. I was now in librarian/book lover heaven. Eventually I settled on a big fat hardback book, Mexico, by James Michener. The author started this book in 1961, and picked it up and finished it thirty years later. Perhaps he should have left it on the shelf. While, as with most of Michener's work, it is steeped with history, I found the characters thin and clichéd. But worst of all TOO MUCH BULLFIGHTING! More than anything else, the book was about the culture of bullfighting in 1961. It might have made a good chapter. But at least it was something to read, to keep my eyes and hands busy in the evening, or on long bus rides.

Enough about books I'm reading, what does this have to do with maps? While in the several Mexico City new book stores, my eyes were drawn to several book covers that used maps in their design. Two of them are illustrating this post. El Espejo Enterrado (The Buried Mirror) by Carlos Fuentes and Breve Historia del Mundo (Brief History of the World) by Ernest H. Gombrich.

Map lovers can be found around the world. It is a universal language.

Maps On The Brain

A selection of recent publications with maps on the cover:

A book:

The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain by George Lakoff

The author attempts to explain why a great number of Americans actually vote against their own interests.



Some magazines:





The cover of this issue of The New Yorker (June 23, 2008) features cover art, “Summer Job”, by Bruce McCall.

If you cannot make out the detail, it fancifully depicts bears checking in and out of the "Employees Entrance" at a National Park, while the tourist are reminded, "No picnicing in Buffalo Wallows."

If you look very closely, you can see that, yes indeed, there is a map! A "You Are Here" map of the park for the tourists.

This cover reminds me of the old Warner Brothers Cartoon where Ralph the wolf and Sam the sheepdog clock in, as buddies, before battling over the sheep.



“Subway Man”, by Roz Chast, graces the June 30 issue of The New Yorker. A stressed out commuter IS the transit map of Manhattan.

Finally, the June 21, 2008, issue of the New Scientist magazine features a very hot looking planet Earth, for a cover story on global warming.


#207

Happy Father's Day to Me

Happy Father's Day to Me!

For Father's Day today, I was given a copy of You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination, edited by Katharine Harmon. Yes, I know I've already talked about it here and here. But I was only able to enjoy this book for three weeks at a time, checked out from the library.

There are so many delightful maps in this book, I would like to blog about them all... but that is not necessary, since Katharine Harmon has already put them together for you in this one place. Buy this book! I love it.

A Father's Day gift from several years ago. My family knows what I like...




#195

Vermeer's Hat

The "glowing" painting by Johannes Vermeer, "Officer and Laughing Girl", is featured on the cover of this new book: Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World by Timothy Brook.

At the intersection between World History and Art History, this book examines the work of Vermeer, while focusing on the things that appear in Vermeer's paintings: beaver hats from the New World, porcelain from China, and Turkish rugs. Brook discusses how the "urge to acquire the goods of distant lands was refashioning the world more powerfully than we have yet understood."

Featured in the background of the painting is a Willem Blaeu print of a map of Holland and West Friesland, by mapmaker Balthasar van Berckenrode.

Spanish Jeopardy

"Rex Parker" calls himself "The 55th Greatest Crossword Puzzle Solver In The Universe!" He also collects and writes about vintage paperback books, in his blog, Pop Sensation.

Naturally, this book's cover caught my eye: Jeopardy Is My Job, by Stephen Marlowe.

Hardball detective fiction writer, Stephen Marlowe (must be Phillip's brother), writes about hardball detective, Chester Drum, and his hardball trip to Spain, where he tracks down hardball (highball?) drinkers. Its a good thing he has a map to help him out.

If you enjoy bad book covers, then you should also check out Judge a Book by its Cover.

The Geography of Bliss

Another antidote for the Map of Misery...

The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner.

"Weiner set out on a yearlong quest to find the world's unheralded happy places... he'd travel to countries like Iceland, Bhutan, Qatar, Holland, Switzerland, Thailand and India to try to figure out why residents tell positive psychology researchers that they're actually quite happy." -- Publishers Weekly

I'm happy that the cover designers used a map for the paper airplane.









Also available, in large type with an alternate cover!

Cows of the World, Unite!

In honor of May Day



Image created by John Rieger

Nothing to do with maps, but my favorite book about cows: Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin, illustrated by Betsy Lewin.

When Farmer Brown refuses to comply with the their demands, the cows take action...




Thanks to Hunter for sending the cow map

A Primer of GIS

I received a review copy of A Primer of GIS: Fundamental Geographic and Cartographic Concepts by Francis Harvey.

To paraphrase Dr. McCoy, "I'm a Librarian! Not a Geographer." So, I'll make the same offer I made with Managing Geographic Information Systems, if you would like to have my copy of this book, I will happily send it to you, if you will promise to write a brief review that I will then post here. Deal?


UPDATE 5/1: I have a reviewer... watch this space...

Body Geographic

What better way to sell a book? Combine sex and maps! OK... perhaps that is a very narrow fetish market... Nonetheless, Geography by Sophie Cunningham, must turn a few heads in book stores...
Here we see the softcover edition... Mmmmmm.... maps. Thanks to Kel, from Lost in Place.
These book covers reminded me to pull out this magazine cover I saved many years ago. I posted another example of a "body map" back in October.

More You Are Here

Yesterday, I wrote again about the magnificent "map art" book, You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination. File this under "fun maps found while looking for something else"... While I was searching my library's catalog for a copy of this book (and disappointed that we don't own it) I came across these books with similar titles... and not too suprising, they have maps as part of their cover design:

You Are Here by Steve Horsfall

Four thirtysomething guys looking for love. Presumably they find it in Crete?



You Are Here: A Straight-Shooting Guide to Mapping Your Future by Danny Holland

Danny says, "You can overcome your obstacles, accomplish your life purpose, and live out your passion. It’s your choice. And it can start right now."

You Are Here 2008 Edition: A Guide to Over 380 Colleges and Unlimited Paths to Your Future by Kaplan

• Data and statistics on over 350 colleges for 2008
• 250 profiles of successful college graduates across 50 of today's hottest careers
• Job fact sheets for each of the 50 hottest careers
• Tips from professional organizations on entering specific career fields
• An inside look at 25 specially selected schools

On the Road to...?

It has not been my intention to turn this blog into a "Maps as Art" blog... but it certainly feels like it, lately. There have been so many good ones that have come my way...

I have been reading You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination, edited by Katharine Harmon. This book consists of dozens of excellent examples of "maps as art". Many of them have been featured here and on other map blogs (such as Strange Maps). Buy the book, or see a large portion of it on Google Books. I would love to reproduce all of the images here, but that is more than a bit out-of-bounds. So I'll leave you with this colorful and entertaining painting by Howard Finster:

Howard Finster, All Roads One Road Headed the Same Way, 1978

Baptist preacher and renowned folk artist Howard Finster (1916-2001) devoted his life to art and his art to God... [Finster's map] generously offers many routes to a paradise that is detailed in its delights.

Folks who are not familiar with outsider art may not recognize the name Howard Finster, but music fans might recognize the cover art he did for the Talking Heads album, Little Creatures, which ironicaly, included a song titled "Road To Nowhere" AND a globe!

_______________________
Ms. Cartophiliac was an Art History major in college and completed her senior thesis on outsider artists. Thus, I have been introduced to the chaotic delights of outsider art. Our favoritest museum in the whole world is the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, where many examples of this art genre can be found.

Ms. Cartophiliac is the proud owner of this small Howard Finster sculpture. Unfortunately, we have been obliged to keep it safely stowed away in a closet. Our feline roommates are way too fond of knocking things off of shelves for the fun of it.

Ten Nations of the United States

In an earlier post I discussed Joel Garreau's The Nine Nations of North America. In 1989, Garreau took a look at North America, erased all of the international, state and provincial borders and redrew the lines around regions that have common interests in culture, politics and and industry. This way of looking at regional interests, that transcend state and national boundaries, forever changed my understanding of those regions.

The folks at Beyond Red & Blue, a political blog, have updated this concept, using election data:

Beyond Red & Blue" was conceived about four years ago, in anticipation of the 2004 presidential election. The idea was to divide the United States into 10 regions of equal voting power, each with a distinct history and political bent... Keep in mind that for at least 60 years, no one has ever been elected president without carrying at least five of these regions.

The original article with the 2008 map was posted in September 2007, and last week offered more detail on What went into deciding the 10 regions. It is hard for me to think of myself in Western Ohio, and people living in Indiana or Illinois as having the same identity (Cumberland) as the folks in Appalachia, or that people in the San Joaquin Valley of California are part of the same voting block as North Dakota... But this approach to an electoral map is fascinating nonetheless.

Via The Electoral Map

Cartographia: Mapping Civlizations

I know this book as been noted elsewhere, but I finally had an opportunity to go through it in detail when my library recieved its copy.

Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations by Vincent Virga and The Library of Congress. This gorgeous coffee table-sized book attempts to represent a broad range of maps and mapping, from the earliest times to the present, as well as eastern and western traditions. Most of the maps come from the collections of the Library of Congress.

From the flyleaf:

More than 200 maps, selected from the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress — the largest cartographic collection in the world — are reproduced in this sumptuous volume. Some of the rarest and most spectacular maps ever made are featured here, including:

• The Waldseemüller Map of the World from 1507, the first to include the designation "America"
• Pages from Ortelius's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum of 1570, considered the first modern atlas
• Rare maps from Africa, Asia, and Oceania that challenge traditional Western perspectives
• William Faulkner's hand-drawn 1936 map of the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi
• A 2001 map of the human genome

With their accompanying stories, the vivid color plates in Cartographia introduce the reader to an exciting new way of reading maps as travelogues—as living histories from the earliest imaginings about planet Earth to our current attempts at charting cyberspace, the latest of our “last frontiers.”

Here is a very ancient map, in cuneiform, from ancient Mesopotamia.

Below is a very Japanese map of Japan on porcelain.

As an example of modern maps, and the different ways they can present information, the authors also included Gastner, Shalizi, and Newman's 2004 presidential election cartograms.

A worthy addition to any cartophile's book collection.

After Iraq

It is always a delight to see where a map might lead me... This week, while browsing the magazine stacks in the library, I was awe-struck by the map design on the cover of the January/February, 2008, issue of The Atlantic magazine. How did I miss it when it came out? I immediately appreciated the artists intent by his use of game pieces and dice on a map of the Middle East, as if it was all some sort of game.

After Iraq, by Jeffrey Goldberg, discusses the effects of the Iraq War on the Middle East including the possibility of independence for Kurdistan from Iraq. British influence in the Middle East led to the formation of Iraq and the separation of Palestine. A large-scale conflict between Shiites and Sunnis in the Middle East could occur. Intelligence expert Ralph Peters comments on U.S. plans for the unification of Iraq and the spread of democracy.

Peters also discusses the artificial nature in which Middle-Eastern borders were created following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire:

All states are man-made. But some are more man-made than others. It was Winston Churchill (a bust of whom Bush keeps in the Oval Office) who, in the aftermath of World War I, roped together three provinces of the defeated and dissolved Ottoman Empire, adopted the name Iraq, and bequeathed it to a luckless branch of the Hashemite tribe of west Arabia. Churchill would eventually call the forced inclusion of the Kurds in Iraq one of his worst mistakes-- but by then, there was nothing he could do about it.

That quote about Churchill and the arbitrary nature in which borders were redrawn after the Great War reminded me of a book I read just last year, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, by Margaret Macmillan. The author describes the six months following the end of the First World War when leaders of the great powers, as well as men and women from all over the world, all with their own agendas, converged on Paris to shape the peace. Wilson had noble (and naïve?) intentions of reshaping Europe (and the Middle-East) to create a lasting peace, but his frustratingly vague concepts like 'self-determination' often confused even his own advisors. Eventually, many of the borders drawn in Paris served only to forestall conflict. Just as the fall of communism exposed the underlying currents of racial strife in the Balkans, the fall of Iraq has served to re-ignite religious and ethnic tensions enclosed in the new borders.

Below are two maps from Paris 1919 that illustrate some of the many plans for divvying up the Ottoman spoils:





Another aspect of Goldberg's Atlanic article are his speculations on how the map of the Middle-East could change in the next ten to fifty years, as regimes rise and fall, and ethnic and religious differences lead to reduced, enlarged and newly created nations.



In his article, "Blood borders: How a better Middle East would look," in the June, 2006, issue of the Armed Forces Journal, Ralph Peters took a turn at re-imagining the Middle-East:



Jeffrey Goldberg talked to Peters in preparation for his Atlantic article:

Peters drew onto his map an independent Kurdistan and an abridged Turkey; he shrank Iran (handing over Khuzestan to an as-yet-imaginary Arab-Shiite state he carved out of what is now southern Iraq); he placed Jordan and Yemen on a steroid regimen; and he dismembered Saudi Arabia because be sees it as a primary enemy of Muslim modernization.

It was an act of knowing whimsy, he said. But it was seen by tbe Middle East's more fevered minds as a window onto the American imperial planning process. "The reaction was pure paranoia, just hysterics," Peters told me. "The Turks in particular got very upset." Peters explained how he made the map. "The art department gave me a blank map, and I took a crayon and drew on it. After it came out, people started arguing on the Internet that this border should, in fact, be 50 miles this way, and that border 50 miles that way, but the width of the crayon itself was 200 miles."

It certainly looks like we are nowhere near an end to turmoil in the Middle-East, and I fear that there will be more blood shed before there can be a "lasting peace". It is possible that to achieve that peace, new borders will need to be drawn...

Managing Geographic Information Systems

I have lately experienced an interesting phenomenon that I imagine many bloggers, at least those with a moderate following, have experienced: The Promotion Campaign. I have been contacted several times by PR people as part of their attempt to create some buzz about the product, exhibit, service or website they are promoting. If it is relevant to my topic, maps and map memorabilia, I am more than happy to give them a plug.

In that same vein, I was delighted to post about John Krygier's book, Making Maps: A Visual Guide to Map Design for GIS, not only because it is an interesting book, but I also am a fan of his supplementary blog, Making Maps: DIY Cartography. As stated from the beginning, I am not a cartographer, nor professional geographer. Neither am I versant in the use of geographical information systems. I felt semi-competent commenting on Krygier's book because it had wonderful advice for the amateur mapmaker, as well as some clever and useful illustrations.

Presumably, because of that review, and the fact that I am a librarian, Krygier's publisher, Guilford Press, has me on a list. Today I received a review copy of Managing Geographic Information Systems, Second Edition, by Nancy J. Obermeyer and Jeffrey K. Pinto. Aside from my wholehearted endorsement of the attractive use of topographic map iconography in the cover design, I am very unqualified to comment on the quality of the book's contents. I just don't do GIS. However, I would like to honor Guilford's trust in me by at least attempting to get a review for them. Therefore, I am willing to mail this copy of the book to anyone interested in GIS and feels as if they could give this book and its authors a fair evaluation. Contact me and include your address (USA only) and I will send it your way. Write up a review and I will post it here.

Roxaboxen

Last week I told you about a sweet little book about a boy who invents his own imaginary country, Weslandia. Marilyn Terrell, of Intelligent Travel, posted a comment to tell me about a similar book: "It reminds me of the book "Roxaboxen" by Alice McLarren and illustrated beautifully by Barbara Cooney, about a group of children who make their own magical town out of boxes and stones. My kids used to love it when they were little, and I did too." I love it too! It reminds me of the hours and hours of imaginative play with my own childhood friends in the neighborhood.

A town of Roxaboxen began to grow, traced in lines of stone: Main Street first, edged with the whitest ones, and the houses.

Weslandia

I have written in previous posts about "imaginary countries" or "geofictional projects" such as Quastolia or Alphistia that started out in our back yards. In Weslandia, a children's picture story book written by Paul Fleischman and illustrated by Kevin Hawkes, we are introduced to Wesley, a boy who just doesn't seem to "fit in" with other children his age. So, as a summer project, he plants a garden that eventually blooms into his own little country in the back yard.

For Weslandia, Wesley has created his own language, foods, games, industry and cash crops. Soon he becomes the envy of all the other kids in the neighborhood. In my experience, any time I shared stories with my friends about Quastolia, all I got were queer looks... but good for Wesley!

The only thing lacking in this amusing children's tale is a good map! However, it is a clever story about a boy that creates his own country, and that deserves mention.

Wisconsin: The Badger State

In honor of the Wisonsin Primary, today, I present the two Wisconsin map postcards from my collection:





I lived briefly (less than two years) in Ripon, Wisconsin. "Birthplace of the Republican Party". In spite of that, I truly enjoyed living in the state.

• For up-to-date info on the Wisconsin Primary visit Wisconsin Votes.


• For cartographic analysis of the Wisconsin Primary, visit The Electoral Map.


• Wisconsin, the "Badger State", was the 30th state to enter the Union.


• Wisconsin is known for its German heritage and many breweries. Purchase of copy of The Wisconsin Beer Guide to find your way around.