Customer Reviews

Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations

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Reviewed by Peg Brantley

"X" marks the spot. Do you remember that? You knew you'd found treasure--or at the very least, an amazing secret waiting to be unearthed.

Cartographia is a treasure that is waiting for map and history lovers of all generations to discover. This beautiful work of art will hold your attention for hours as you look at maps drawn on paper, on wood, on stone, on figurines, and in tapestries. World maps, metaphorical maps, a map depicting a square earth and round heaven, maps on warfare, and the Oregon Trail. From ancient maps to one of the human genome, they're all contained within the pages of this book.

The text brings history alive and helps to develop an understanding of the psychology and culture behind the creation of these charted representations.

Vincent Virga, "America's foremost picture editor," is well known in history circles. Collaborating with The Library of Congress (where more than five million maps reside), he has put together an awesome book illuminating the diversity of people who populate our planet. Not only their different geographic landscapes, but also their cultural and social visions of the world and how those ideas have changed over time are represented. From Africa to the Netherlands, China to Ireland, Christianity, Judaism, Islam...you will receive a sense of human attitudes and ideas thoughtfully portrayed in the permanent form of maps.

If you ever get a thrill finding your destination, reading the map key to open the mysteries before you, or locating your house on Google Earth, Cartographia will captivate you.

If you know someone these emotions apply to, don't let them miss this book.

"X" marks the spot. You can find it in Cartographia.

Armchair Interviews says: Map lovers of the world, unite.

Although this is an attractive coffee table book, the lack of a bibliography is troubling. Vincent Virga does not cite the scholars whose ideas he disseminates. Virga admits in the acknowledgments that he didn't "get" maps or mapmaking when he started the project. Yet, he takes credit for the ideas, as if by hanging out with scholars and librarians at the Library of Congress, he was able to come up with a "new approach" to cartography and to understand the map history of every corner of the globe. This would take a lifetime of study. One of his main sources is the multi-volume encyclopedic History of Cartography published by University of Chicago Press, which introduces and explains many of the same maps. Yet he never cites this important and original work nor refers his readers to it. In fact, he does not cite a single book or article.

More ethical and scrupulous nonfiction authors who write for a popular audience use endnotes and a bibliography or an annotated bibliography to give credit to the scholars and authors whose work they popularize. Virga's "cartobibliography" shows only where he got permission to reprint the images. Without a real bibliography, most readers will never find the scholarly works where Virga got his ideas. It is troubling that the Library of Congress participated in this project on
those terms.

"Cartographia," by Vincent Virga and the Library of Congress is an amazing volume that explores in depth the development of the art of cartogtraphy, map-making, from ancient times to the present. This handsome, over-sized, volume with full color photos of beautiful and rare maps throughout the ages, is a must-have for anyone interested in history, geography or maps.

The book is arranged in sections divided by region of the world (i.e. Mediterranean, Europe, the Americas, Asia, etc). The text is extremely informative, well-written and engaging, while also very concise and focused. The map photos are absolutely breath-taking! Apparently the U.S. Library of Congress map collection contains more than 4.8 million original maps, and more than 60,000 atlases from ancient times to the present- which is absolutely incredible in and of itself!

Some of the maps and sections I found most interesting were: the early maps of the "New World," with all their interesting speculations and inaccuracies; the maps of Egypt- both by the ancient Egyptians, as well as maps made by Napoleon's early 19th century expedition and others. This magnficient volume also includes some early road and transit maps made right around the time that the national highway system was beginning to take shape across America in the mid twentieth century.

I highly, highly recommend this excellent volume- not only for the amazing maps and excellent text, but also for a sense of perspective of how maps have been shaped by human cultural perceptions of those in power throughout the ages. It is also a great book for parents with school age children, or to display as a living room, coffee table conversation piece. Pick this one up, and enjoy!

Well, I'm kind of split on this one. This is a great, comprehensive treatment of maps across time, history, and cultures. That said, Virga's socio-political viewpoint leaks out throughout the book. So, it makes a great reference book for the evolution of maps around the world, with lots of great color illustrations (though they make you want to track down a full-sized copy so you can read the details - keep a magnifying glass handy when you read this book). But to read cover to cover as a history, it gets a bit tiring. My general gripe with Virga's writing is that maps made by non-European cultures are wonderful, brilliant, advanced, etc., while maps made by Eurpoean cultures are tools for the spread of colonialism, capitalism, or any other -ism that European culture is typically criticised for. Regardless of one's opinion about this aspect of European history, it's usually not relevant to the topic at hand. An example of the introduction of a socio-political bias that is unnecessary to the purpose, is this line, regarding maps used to define international agreements about nations' economic boundaries into coastal waters - "...opponents in the United States argue that the Law of the Sea Treaty...interferes with private industry's right to profit at the expense of biodiversity". That last phrase ("at the expense of biodiversity) is almost certainly not what opponents argue, is dropped into the text with no basis in information already provided, and has nothing to do with the map or the discussion of the map except that there are opponents to such treaties.

Anyway, it's actually a good book for background on maps from human history and from around the world. It's just best to take the text in small doses and try to set aside the blatant political commentary that slips in here and there.

I recently had the opportunity to peruse this book in a local library. I agree with all of the other reviewers that this book has astounding images, well-reproduced, and documenting a wide variety of maps in a multitude of different contexts. There are plenty of cartographic classics (the double sided ancient Chinese grid map, the "clover" Crusader map centered around Jerusalem) alongside some less well known maps (an Etruscan divining liver map--that's a stone replica of a liver with marks about how to divine things from it, a Japanese historical battle map showing the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate).

However, I must say that the accompanying text is really lacking. To be frank, it's downright repulsive. Stylistically, it's uninspiring at best. Furthermore, the text is filled with "explanations" about "what's really going on" that are totally unsubstantiated. Unfortunately, this book is hardly unique in that regard. It is symptomatic of our times to show "expertise" on this or that via simplistic reductive arguments that we've all grown too tired to challenge.

Two examples come to mind specifically. In the section on Japanese maps of Japan, he tries to argue that the ambiguity of the maps implies a mindset amongst the Japanese putting Japan as being "undefined in space" or something of that nature. Now that claim may very well be true, but he presents next to argument to support it other than images which appear just as ambiguous as other maps. There may be a way to deduce that conclusion from the maps but he doesn't show anything, he merely states.

More nauseating was the pat analysis of the Vietnam war. He reproduces a formerly classified US government map showing South Vietnam totally fragmented by VC presence and uses it to launch into a tired tirade about the follies of the US government blah blah blah. Once again, the conclusion may or may not be true but shiny pictures aren't really a substitute for critical analysis.

This book raises some very interesting questions about what and how much one can conclude about a society from the character of its maps. However, the shameless sophistry that follows makes it clear that the author has little regard for the complexity that such questions entail.

So if I was addressing a potential buyer/reader, I would say that the images in the book really are fabulous and the comments are at times enlightening. But if you're the kind of reader who doesn't appreciate pat conclusions that are pre-determined by some unspoken post-god-knows-what party line, brace yourself for a beautiful book but a stomach turning read.

This book can be summed up with "Hey, guess which one of my preconceived political notions THIS map reminds me of!" The maps are pretty, but the accompanying text needs a heavy-duty BS filter.

Here is an example: According to Vincent Virga on page 117, the 2003 CIA map of Africa, with its plain, empty lines, is an expression of the CIA's desire to downplay the complex military, economic and social problems of developing countries. There is no explanation of why France, Germany and Spain are depicted exactly the same way.

Don't get me wrong, colonialism is pretty bad, but that doesn't mean that it permeates every drop of ink on every map. To say, as Virga does on page 109, that colonialism was the sole reason for the Rwandan genocide is to infantalize the actual perpetrators and ignore their status as human beings capable of making their own decisions. The social, political and economic problems left behind by colonialism almost certainly play a role in the way people former-colony developing countries live today, but their history didn't begin when the French and British and Belgians showed up and it didn't end when they left either.

The text of Cartographia leaves one with the impression that it was written by a man looking up at the clouds, imagining that he sees a hand or a duck or a representation of capitalist oppression in what is really just a cloud or, in this case, just a map. The most tragic part of it is that any actual insight that Virga might have provided into the real history and meaning of these maps is buried and discredited.

I saw the author on C-Span2 and ordered the book immediately. I was not disappointed. This is a gorgeous and informative book about the history of maps and how they reflect our understanding of the world in which we live. Anyone who has ever enjoyed the beauty of maps or has wondered how maps were made before aerial photography will love this book.

Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations - this book was purchased as a present for a member of the family turning 70 years of age - a learned man, keen on history, who already had many books, etc. He was absolutely delighted with this book. I had to search for it, but it was a worthwhile purchase, and one not found in Australia. I thoroughly recommend this book to young and old - it is a book which captures your undivided attention for hours.

It was a gift for my son-in-law, a Federal Surveyor. My daughter said he couldn't put it down for the entire first evening. It is lovely quality - ready for a coffee table.

This book gives a unique glimpse at not only the history of cartography, but also the various purposes maps can serve. For maps lovers, like myself, the material is a window into other worlds of ancient knowledge thru beautiful illustrations and clear text.