A stunning, thought-provoking exploration of how maps shape our understanding of the world-featuring over 150 full-color maps in a gorgeous package
Maps in the data age are ubiquitous. In an instant, places, social networks, even the human genome can be drawn up in exacting detail. Yet the ease and speed with which we can graph data perpetuates the same problem that has been around for centuries: over-simplified maps that are used as tools for top-down control.
Cartographer and historian William Rankin argues that it's time to reimagine what a map can be and how it can be used. It's important to recognize that rather than being objective visualizations of facts, maps are innately political, defining what is worth noticing, drawing borders, and crafting conclusions about the ground they cover. And the consequences are enormous. The visual argument of a map can change how cities are designed and how rivers flow, how wars are fought and how land claims are settled, how children learn about race and how colonialism becomes a habit of mind. Maps don't just show us data-they help construct our world.
Brimming with vibrant maps, including many "radical" maps created by Rankin himself and by other mapmakers, Radical Cartography exposes the ways maps can shape our realities and our understanding of them through their representation of boundaries, layers, people, projections, color, scale, and time. Challenging the map as a tool of the status quo, Rankin empowers readers to embrace three seemingly paradoxical values as the future of cartography: uncertainty, multiplicity, and subjectivity. Changing the tools-changing the maps-can change the questions we ask, the answers we accept, and the world we build. William Rankin is a historian of science at Yale University, where he focuses on the history of mapping and the geographic sciences. Born and raised outside Chicago, he was originally trained as an architect before receiving a dual PhD in the history of science and architecture from Harvard. In addition to his work as a historian, he is also an award-winning cartographer, and his maps-available at www.radicalcartography.net-have appeared in numerous books, magazines, and exhibits around the world.
