The Work That Maps Do

Martin Brückner's The Social Life of Maps will appeal to scholars from many disciplines—material studies and English literature (his home fields), geography, American studies, and, not least, the U.S. historical community. Maps have never been the preserve of geographers, certainly not in their making nor, as Brückner convincingly shows, in the various practices of public and popular "mappery." One of the strengths of this book is that it re-affirms and deepens the connections of geography as an educational and imaginative practice with the power of the historical imagination in shaping America's national identity, territorial reach, and, if only nascent in the period that Brückner considers, empire.