The Power of Maps [Paperback]

Denis Wood (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 16, 1992 | ISBN-10: 0898624932 | ISBN-13: 978-0898624939 | Edition: 1

This volume ventures into terrain where even the most sophisticated map fails to lead--through the mapmaker's bias. Denis Wood shows how maps are not impartial reference objects, but rather instruments of communication, persuasion, and power. Like paintings, they express a point of view. By connecting us to a reality that could not exist in the absence of maps--a world of property lines and voting rights, taxation districts and enterprise zones--they embody and project the interests of their creators. Sampling the scope of maps available today, illustrations include Peter Gould's AIDS map, Tom Van Sant's map of the earth, U.S. Geological Survey maps, and a child's drawing of the world. THE POWER OF MAPS was published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt Museum, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Design.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This book accompanies an exhibit called "The Power of Maps," which is being held at New York City's Cooper Hewitt Museum from October 1992 to March 1993. For those not fortunate enough to see the exhibit, the book stands by itself. It aims to show that every cartographer has an agenda of some kind and to assist the map user in figuring out that agenda. The writing is entertaining but a bit wordy and irritatingly full of ellipses. In addition, though cocurator Wood's thinking is often quite good, the reader must still beware of flights of fancy, as when he gives a facetious reason for why United States Geological Survey maps don't have full legends on each. For general collections and collections on cartography.
- Mary L. Larsgaard, Univ. of California-Santa Barbara Map & Imagery Lab Lib.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"If compelled to cite only a single book on cartography to stock a desert-island shelf or to assign to the eager novice, this is the automatic choice....Although I have been drawing and poring over maps, as well as reading about them, since childhood, I received more revelations about their essential nature and larger meanings from this one powerful, disturbing, totally convincing essay than from all the other books, articles, and lectures on the subject I have ever encountered.' --Wilbur Zelinsky, The Pennsylvania State University

"Combining both topical issues relevant to lay readers and serious scholarship, Denis Wood's The Power of Maps will provoke, amuse, tweak, and inform anyone who has had occasion to use, or merely peruse, a map--which is to say, everyone. It is a relentless entertainment--relentlessly challenging to traditional assumptions about cartography, relentlessly witty as it deconstructs (read: demolishes) the pretense of neutral, scientific' map-making, and relentlessly contrary in reminding us that maps reflect social choices and serve particular political interests.' --Stephen S. Hall, author of Mapping the Next Millennium

"Perhaps the simplest thing to say is that there is nothing quite like it! There are, of course, countless conventional accounts of cartography -- usually a combination of the history of cartography and a catalogue of its technical achievements-- but these are usually Whiggish tales which celebrate the progressive advance of cartography towards 'Truth.' Apart from a short discussion of so-called 'propaganda maps' (which is there simply to mark a departure from the norm, so to speak, an anomaly) these books rarely offer any sustained discussion of what one might call the cultural and political implications of maps and mapping. With the current explosion of interest in cultural politics and social theory, both inside and outside human geography, there is an obvious need for a discussion which resists those conventions. I can think of only Mark Monmonier's HOW TO LIE WITH MAPS -- which from all accounts has done extremely well, but is narrower in scope than Wood's text -- and the late Brian Harley's marvellous essays on deconstruction and mapping -- which may well be too abstract for many readers. In any event, I have no doubt that Denis Wood's book will be a major contribution to this emerging discussion of the power and politics of maps and mapping: it is written in a clear and accessible style but none the less deals with some of the most complex issues in contemporary debates over power, knowledge and spatiality. It is immensely engaging: the examples and illustrations are to the point and by no means obvious, and the issues that are raised extend far beyond the confines of any purely academic discipline. This is one of those rare books that will prompt its readers to re-think some of their most taken-for-granted assumptions and the ways in which those conventions bear on their everyday lives."
-- Derek Gregory, The University of British Columbia

Product Details

• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: The Guilford Press; 1 edition (October 16, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898624932
• ISBN-13: 978-0898624939
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #490,722 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #68 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Earth Sciences > Cartography

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great multidisciplinary rant about maps and their uses., June 19, 1995

By A Customer

This review is from: The Power of Maps (Paperback)

Ranging from strident politics to Eco-like semiotics, this
book considers the map in all its forms, intents and uses.
The text is a little too preachy for much of the book,
but the quality of some of the ideas and the enthusiam
with which Wood presents them makes this bearable.

Wood's basic point is that maps are human constructs that
come with points of view. As such, questions about the
qualities of a map can't be answered without also asking
what the map was constructed for. With examples ranging
from the Peters Projection controversies, to election
gerrymandering, to natural resource utilization, he shows
how all maps are designed to both include and to exclude,
and how they embody a representation of the world in the
best tradition of Eco's "signs".

A great book, slightly marred by the writing style.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, challenging, and relevant, September 7, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Power of Maps (Hardcover)

If you want to know what you can do with maps and what their creators are able to do with them, read this. It's an important book for anyone interested in the history of maps or in the ways we make political and social decisions on the basis of mapped information today. Yes, Wood does build a complex analytical structure for deciphering maps, but they are intricate objects and dense with information. This is an excellent source for anyone with a serious interest in the subject.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ... the heights!, May 11, 2002

By 

lance potter (Boca Raton, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Power of Maps (Paperback)

If you want the history of cartography or an explanation of its technicalities, this is not the book for you. If you want to see more clearly the human landscape in which maps are embedded and the human activities for which maps are constructed, this IS the book for you! Brilliant and fun and informative reading for cartographers and laymen. Denis Wood shows how maps represent societies as much as topographies. Grab your topo for rafting trip through time and place!