One fascinating spread shows one such map from 1814 merged with the General Land Office's first complete land survey of the United States (circa 1870), a map from the 1970 United States Geological Survey National Atlas, and a mosaic of Landsat satellite imagery from NASA. Maps resulting from the explorations of Lewis and Clark in the early 1800s. There are maps of Northwest America, drawn by George Vancouver in 1798. It is juxtaposed with early maps from the same period, maps of America and Mexico, with their respective details, such as major cities, rivers, even the beginnings of topography. Great sweeps of land and water, few details, a sort of quaint version of our world. The starting image of the book is an antique globe from 1731, the view that God might have had if He were sketching Earth from space. Namely, how did a vast wilderness that stretched 3000 miles from the Atlantic become a civilization? How did it develop? What does the progression of its cartography tell us about the nation itself - and its population? In more than 100 historical maps created in the 18th and 19th centuries, the story of this book is told mostly by implication. Though slim, it's a truly magnificent undertaking and a document that charts - excuse the unintended pun - the movement across the land that has become the United States. I have never seen a book quite like Cartographica Extraordinaire. Review | Cartographica Extraordinaire by David Ramsey and Edith Punt
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