An updated edition of the "humorous, informative and perceptive" guide to how maps can lead us astray ( Toronto Globe and Mail).An instant classic when first published in 1991, How to Lie with Maps revealed how the choices mapmakers make—consciously or unconsciously—mean that every map inevitably presents only one of many possible stories about the places it depicts. The principles Mark Monmonier outlined back then remain true today, despite signif...

For years Mark Monmonier, "a prose stylist of no mean ability or charm" according to the Washington Post, has delighted readers with his insightful understanding of cartography as an art and technology that is both deceptive and revealing. Now he turns his focus to the story of political cartography and the redrawing of congressional districts. His title Bushmanders and Bullwinkles combines gerrymander with the surname of the president who actively tolerated raci...

"A most welcome and thorough investigation of a neglected aspect of both the history of cartography and modern cartographic practice." — MaplineMaps with the News is a lively assessment of the role of cartography in American journalism. Tracing the use of maps in American news reporting from the eighteenth century to the 1980s, Mark Monmonier explores why and how journalistic maps have achieved such importance."A w...

Writers know only too well how long it can take—and how awkward it can be—to describe spatial relationships with words alone. And while a map might not always be worth a thousand words, a good one can help writers communicate an argument or explanation clearly, succinctly, and effectively.In his acclaimed How to Lie with Maps, Mark Monmonier showed how maps can distort facts. In Mapping it Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences, he shows...

This book explores the US patent system, which helped practical minded innovators establish intellectual property rights and fulfill the need for achievement that motivates inventors and scholars alike. In this sense, the patent system was a parallel literature: a vetting institution similar to the conventional academic-scientific-technical journal insofar as the patent examiner was both editor and peer reviewer, while the patent attorney was a co-author or ghost writer. In probing evolvin...

A city guy who aspired to be a farmer, John Byron Plato took a three-month winter course in agriculture at Cornell before starting high school, which he left a year before graduation to fight in the Spanish-American War. He worked as a draftsman, ran a veneers business, patented and manufactured a parking brake for horse-drawn delivery wagons, taught school, and ran a lumber yard. In his early thirties he bought some farmland north of Denver, Colorado, and began raising Guernsey cattle, wh...

Behind every great map is a network and behind every great network is a map.In Connections and Content: Reflections on Networks and the History of Cartography, cartographic cogitator Mark Monmonier shares his insights about the relationships between networks and maps. Using historical maps, he explores:Triangulation networks that established the baselines to set a map’s scaleAstronomical observations, ellipsoids, geodetic arcs, tele...

"A delightful exposition of commonly-encountered statistical fallacies and paradoxes and why they matter." —Samuel H. Preston, coauthor of Demography: Measuring and Modeling Population ProcessesAn essential guide to the ways data can improve decision making.Statistics are everywhere: in news reports, at the doctor's office, and in every sort of forecast, from the stock market to the weather. Allen B. Downey knows well that people have an innate abil...

Short essays offer a kaleidoscopic, “provocative history of France” and its place within the world—from its prehistoric frescoes and Coco Chanel to the terrorist attacks of 2015 (New Yorker).“A major work, exhaustive, controversial and fresh—and entirely relevant to Anglophone readers”—that redefines how we write about national and world history (Guardian).Bringing together an impressive group of established and up-and-com...

A study of how doctors and surgeons treated the brutal injuries and illnesses suffered by medieval combatants.Soldiers of the Middle Ages faced razor-sharp swords and axes that could slice through flesh with gruesome ease, while spears and arrows were made to puncture both armor and the wearer, and even more sinister means of causing harm produced burns and crush injuries. These casualties of war during the 500-year period between the ninth and thirteenth centuries...

" Mental Immunity is the perfect vaccine for the mind-viruses infecting our culture: alternative facts, fake news, and conspiracy thinking, to name a few." —Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and author of The Believing BrainAstonishingly irrational ideas are spreading. Covid denial persists in the face of overwhelming evidence. Anti-vaxxers compromise public health. Conspiracy thinking hijacks minds and incites mob violence. T...

This "fascinating and illuminating account" explores how we might perceive the mind if we didn't put humans at the center of our understanding ( The Guardian Observer).Popular science writer Philip Ball explores a range of sciences to map our answers to a huge, philosophically rich question: How do we even begin to think about minds that are not human?Taking a uniquely broad view of minds and where to find them—including in plants, aliens, and God—Ph...