This is not a list of recommendations: what’s here is mainly what I’ve spotted online, and there’s probably a lot more out there. In most cases I haven’t even seen what’s listed here, much less reviewed it: these are simply things that look like they might be fit for gift giving. (Anyone who tries to parlay this into “recommended by The Map Room” is going to get a very sad look from me.)

Atlases

2023 saw the release of a new edition of the Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, widely seen as the granddaddy of all world atlases. At The 16th edition came in October in the U.K. and is scheduled to launch in North America next Tuesday, so there should be time to get it in your hands by Christmas. At £175 /$260 it’s not exactly a stocking stuffer;¹ if you’re looking for something more modest in size, weight and cost, consider another entry from the Times Atlas line, or the Oxford Atlas of the World, which gets a fresh update each year. Also new this year: the National Geographic Atlas of Wild America.

• National Geographic Atlas of Wild America by Jon Waterman. $65. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
• Oxford Atlas of the World, 30th edition. $95. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
• The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, 16th edition. £175/$260. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.

Other Kinds of Map Books

Either it’s been a really thin year for new map books, or for various reasons news of them is not reaching my ears. Books of interest to a general audience (as opposed to academic monographs or GIS manuals) that came out in 2023 include the following:

• The Globemakers: The Curious Story of an Ancient Craft by Peter Bellerby. £25/$30. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
• The Lost Subways of North America by Jake Berman. $35. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
• Dublin: Mapping the City by Joseph Brady and Paul Ferguson. £30/$45. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
• Atlas of Imagined Cities: From Central Perk to Kanto by Matt Brown and Rhys B. Davies. £25/$35. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
• A History of the World in 500 Maps by Christian Grataloup. £35. Amazon (UK-only).
• Buffalo in 50 Maps by Vicky Johnson-Dahl. $24. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
• The Deepest Map: The High-Stakes Race to Chart the World’s Oceans by Laura Trethewey. $32. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.

More books are listed on the Map Books of 2023 page.

Calendar

A shoutout to the GeoHipster Calendar, back again in 2023.

Alternative Guides

Once again, Evan Applegate has assembled his own gift guide featuring everything from prints to globes to mugs. “Today you can support great mapmakers making hand-painted globes, cartographic dishware, watercolor street maps, letterpress landscapes and more. No affiliate links, just a gallery of great map material culture.”

Also be sure to check out gift guides from previous years: items listed on the 2022, 2021, 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016 gift guides may still be available (in 2020 I focused on map stationery, which ditto).

Finally, note that while Evan’s guide doesn’t contain affiliate links, mine certainly does (as have previous versions); I receive a cut of the purchase price if you make a purchase via these links.

Once again, I’m a bit late with my annual gift guide. The idea of which is, if you have a map-obsessed person in your life and would like to give them something map-related—or you are a map-obsessed person and would like your broad hints to have something to link to—this guide may give you some ideas.

This list is a long way from comprehensive. Be sure to check out gift guides from previous years: see, for example, the 2021, 2019, 2018 and 2017 gift guides (in 2020 I focused on map stationery). Much of what’s listed may still be available. And even more books are listed on the Map Books of 2022 page.

Please keep in mind that this is not a list of recommendations: what’s here is mainly what I’ve spotted online, and there’s probably a lot more out there. In many cases I haven’t even seen what’s listed here, much less reviewed it: these are simply things that look like they might be fit for gift giving. (Anyone who tries to parlay this into “recommended by The Map Room” is going to get a very sad look from me.)

Finally, this post contains affiliate links; I receive a cut of the purchase price if you make a purchase via these links.

The Quarantine Atlas

The Quarantine Atlas (Black Dog & Leventhal): edited by Laura Biss, this is a book-length distillation of CityLab’s COVID-19 mapping project that includes 65 maps submitted by readers, plus essays by divers hands. Given the subject matter, probably something to be gifted with care. See previous entry. $32
Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

The Cartographers

Peng Shepherd’s novel The Cartographers (William Morrow/Orion) is both a murder mystery and a fantasy novel that incorporates all kinds of map tropes. As I said in my review for Strange Horizons, “I have encountered many works of fiction that incorporate maps and map tropes into their storytelling, whether as paratexts or as plot elements, and I have never encountered a story, at any length, as thoroughly encompassed by maps as The Cartographers.” See previous entry. $28/£15
Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

The LEGO Globe

While there have been third-party LEGO globes before, LEGO’s own globe, which came out early this year, has 2,585 pieces and is 40 cm (16 inches) tall when assembled. See previous entry. $230/£200/230€
Amazon (Canada, UK) | LEGO.com

For the Coffee Table

The term of art for books like these is “lavishly illustrated”: books with pages and pages of beautiful maps. At least two were published this year: The Atlas of Atlases (Ivy), in which Philip Parker explores the most important atlases in history; and Maps That Made History (Lannoo), in which Martijn Storms presents 100 maps, covering a thousand years of history, from the collections of Leiden University Libraries.

• The Atlas of Atlases ($40/£28): Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop
• Maps That Made History (79€): Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

For the Cartographer

Kenneth Field’s Thematic Mapping 101 (Esri), published in ebook in 2021, came out in a paper edition earlier this year. $72: Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

The 6th volume of NACIS’s biennial Atlas of Design has just come out. I’ve been sent a review copy, and a review is forthcoming; let me say right now that the examples of mapmaking in these pages are both diverse and stunning. See previous entry. Order here. $25

The GeoHipster Calendar is back for another year as well: order at Lulu.

(Be sure that the cartographer in your life doesn’t already have these: chances are good.)

For the Correspondent

I ordered map stationery from Pepin Press when one of my favourite pen stores got it in stock. I haven’t had a chance to review it or use it yet—I’m kind of reluctant to spoil it, I guess—but look for something along those lines in the future. See the 2020 guide to map stationery for more information and other options.

• Historical Maps A4 Notepad ($22.50/17.50€): Amazon (Canada, UK)
• Historical Maps A5 Notepad ($15/13€): Amazon (Canada, UK)
• Historical Maps: Labels, Stickers and Tapes ($15/13€): Amazon (Canada, UK)
• Maps Letter Writing Set ($34/25€): Amazon (Canada, UK)

(C6 and DL-sized envelopes are also available separately.)

For the Transit Geek

The Toronto Transit Commission gift shop has a number of transit-map tchotchkes, including laptop skins, pillows, a puzzle, an umbrella, a cap—and, get this, subway map skateboard decks. Also, don’t miss Cameron Booth’s gift guide at Transit Maps.

To Put Up on the Wall

When it comes to map prints, globes, puzzles, art, swag and other tangible materials, it’s often best to buy directly from the artist. Evan Applegate has assembled a very comprehensive gift guide linking to many artists’ stores.

World Atlases

While the Oxford Atlas of the World saw its usual annual update, and some of the not-quite-flagship atlas lines saw new editions, such as the National Geographic Concise and the Collins World Atlas: Essential Edition, this is the first time in years that there hasn’t been an update to the Times Atlas line, which is kind of concerning. See the 2021 gift guide for links to the various Times atlases, plus a guide to other flagship atlases that didn’t necessarily get new editions this year.

• Oxford Atlas of the World, 29th edition ($90): Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop
• National Geographic Concise Atlas of the World ($30): Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop
• Collins World Atlas: Essential Edition ($18): Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

(Actually no, check that, this year I’m late; and last year I didn’t post one at all except for this stationery guide.)

—I post a gift guide that lists some of the noteworthy books about maps that have been published this year.

(Actually . . . this year not very many books were published. Thanks, pandemic. I’ve had to expand my scope a bit this year.)

If you have a map-obsessed person in your life and would like to give them something map-related—or you are a map-obsessed person and would like your broad hints to have something to link to—this guide may give you some ideas.

Please keep in mind that this is not a list of recommendations: what’s here is mainly what I’ve spotted online, and there’s probably a lot more out there. Also, I haven’t so much as seen most of what’s here, much less reviewed it: these are simply things that, based on what information I have available, seem fit for giving as gifts. (Anyone who tries to parlay this into “recommended by The Map Room” is going to get a very sad look from me.)

This post contains affiliate links; I receive a cut of the purchase price if you make a purchase via these links.

Books

The pandemic has wreaked havoc on the publishing industry, and the effects of paper shortages are clear to see on both the publishing schedule and the availability of already published books. The fall publishing season is the season for general-interest map books, and in particular coffee-table map books, which tend to make rather good gifts for the map obsessed. But as far as I can see, books of that sort that have been published in 2021 are few to none—and I can’t say I’m surprised.

That said, the most interesting-looking book to come out this year that would be fit for these purposes is James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti’s Atlas of the Invisible (Particular, £25; W. W. Norton, $40); see my earlier post about the book for more information and links.
Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

Though I haven’t seen it, or much about it, another book that looks to have some potential is Matt Brown and Rhys B. Davies’s Atlas of Imagined Places (Batsford, £25); trouble is, it appears to be out of stock in most places at the moment.
Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

For a list of map books published in 2021 that is as complete as I can make it, see the Map Books of 2021 page. Or see the page for 2020’s books, since for various reasons I wasn’t able to manage a gift guide last year.

World Atlases

World atlases make fine if large gifts, and there are atlases for every price point. The main atlas lines are the National Geographic, the Oxford, and the Times.

The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World (Collins, £150) is the more or less undisputed king of atlases, but the Times Atlas line comes in smaller and more affordable editions: from largest to smallest, they are the Comprehensive, the Concise, the Universal, the Reference, the Desktop and the (diminutive!) Mini. Each of these is updated every four years or so: in 2021 it was the turn of the Reference and the Mini; in 2020 it was the Concise; in 2019 it was the Desktop and the Universal; in 2018 it was the Comprehensive. I would have expected to see a new Comprehensive next year, but this year the publisher put out an updated reprint of the 15th edition (changes are outlined here), so who knows. I reviewed the 15th edition three years ago.

The Oxford Atlas of the World (Oxford University Press, $90) which is roughly equivalent in size and price to the Times Concise, is updated every single year—that’s its unique selling proposition. I note too that Oxford University Press also has smaller atlases in its line: the New Concise and Essential atlases were updated in 2021.

• Oxford Atlas of the World, 28th ed. (2021), $90:
  Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop
• Oxford New Concise World Atlas, 6th ed. (2021), $40:
  Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop
• Oxford Essential World Atlas, 8th ed. (2021), $25:
  Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

The National Geographic Atlas of the World ($215) comes in one size—large—and its maps are the in the style you expect from National Geographic: if you prefer those to the usual relief maps, this is your atlas. Its most recent edition, the 11th, came out in 2019 (see previous entry). (National Geographic does have other atlases at other price points.)
Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

Children’s Books

Two children’s atlases were published this year, both with a list price of $15:

• Children’s World Atlas from Arcturus
  Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop
• National Geographic Kids World Atlas, 6th ed.
  Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

Last year two children’s books about Marie Tharp were published: see this post from July 2020 for details and links.

The GeoHipster Calendar

The GeoHipster 2022 Calendar ($16) features 14 maps solicited through a call for contributions earlier this year. “Complete with quirky ‘holidays’ and other historical notes designed to pique your geo-curiosity, this is more than your everyday average map calendar!” Lulu

A Swiss Jigsaw Puzzle

Thanks to this tweet from Tom Patterson, I stumbled across this 2,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of a relief map of Switzerland (40 CHF). Carta-Media

The LEGO World Map

The LEGO World Map ($250/€250/£230/C$350), in all its 11,695-piece glory, appears to be available at some retailers after being awfully hard to find on launch earlier this year.
Amazon (Canada, UK) | LEGO Store

Wall Prints

For the past year or so Anton Thomas has been working on Wild World, a pictorial map of the natural world (previously). The whole map is expected to be completed next year, but right now Anton is selling limited-edition prints of the map’s Australasian corner in A2 and A3 sizes.

Stationery

If map-themed postcards, notecards and sets of paper and envelopes are your thing—and they certainly are mine—last year I posted a guide to map stationery.

The Leventhal Map Center Has an Online Store

Finally, the Norman B. Leventhal Map and Information Center at the Boston Public Library finally has an online store. Selection is limited—a few catalogues, a map print, coasters and some map stationery—and shipping isn’t quite available yet: you have to pick up your purchases at the Leventhal. But it’s a start.

This post is a roundup of what map-themed stationery for correspondence I’ve been able to find. It can serve as a gift guide, if map-themed stationery strikes you as a good gift; the holidays, after all, are coming up. As usual, I link to stores selling the stuff; I get a small cut of the income from qualifying purchases.

Postcards

We’ll start with postcards. Cavallini’s vintage map postcards, which came out in 2012 and were reviewed here in 2016, come in a stylish metal tin that contains 18 cards, two each of nine designs. They’re printed on heavy, non-glossy card stock that foxes around the edges a bit, and on a per-card basis they’re comparatively expensive ($12.50). Amazon (Canada, UK)

Notecards

Next up are notecards, which are basically blank greeting cards that come either flat or folded. They give you a bit more space to write than a postcard does, but you’re not escalating things to an Actual Letter. Notecards are great and I use them a lot, though they can sometimes be a challenge to find. Most of these came out a few years ago and may not necessarily be in stock where you shop.

Another thing to keep in mind that some notecards are too small to be mailed: they’re meant to be enclosed or attached. Some are large enough for mail in the U.S. but not elsewhere, because the minimum width standards are different: five inches (127 mm) wide in the U.S. and 140 mm elsewhere in the world.

California artist Wendy Gold uses maps and globes as her canvas; she’s licensed her work to appear on various products, including the Maps of the Imagination notecards ($13.99), which came out in 2014. They come 16 to a box, in four designs where wildlife and other vibrant elements explode from ordinary world maps. They’re large enough for mailing, and the envelopes are classy as heck: I’ve used these cards myself. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop

teNeues has two sets of vintage maps themed notecards: the QuickNotes ($13.95), which includes 20 cards in four designs based on a celestial atlas by Andreas Cellarias; and the GreenNotes ($10.95), which comes in eco-friendly packaging and includes 16 cards in eight designs based on Joan Blaeu’s maps. (QuickNotes are five inches wide and as such are a hair too small for mailing outside the United States; I don’t know if the same goes for the GreenNotes.)

• teNeues Vintage Maps GreenNotes: Amazon (Canada, UK)
• teNeues Vintage Maps QuickNotes: Amazon (Canada, UK)

A set of boxed notecards featuring MacDonald Gill’s Wonderground Map of London came out in 2018 and appears to be hard to find; a video from one bookseller describing the set is here.

Searching Etsy for map notecards turns up several other possibilities.

Correspondence Sets: Paper and Envelopes

Dutch publisher Pepin Press has a number of historical map themed stationery products. They include notepads, envelopes, and a complete letter-writing set. The notepads come in both A5 (€9.95) and A4 (€17.50) sizes; each contains 64 sheets of 120gsm paper that is backed with a reproduction of a historical map; half the sheets are lined and half are blank. The envelopes are DL-sized—suitable for A4- and letter-sized paper folded into thirds—and come in packs of 25 (€12.95). The letter-writing set (€19.95) comes with 40 sheets of A5 paper, 40 C6 envelopes, plus stickers and labels.

• Historical Maps A4 Notepad: Amazon (Canada, UK)
• Historical Maps A5 Notepad: Amazon (Canada, UK)
• Historical Maps DL Envelopes: Amazon (UK)
• Maps Letter Writing Set: Amazon (Canada, UK)

Finally, JAM Paper produces paper and envelopes made from recycled paper maps. Paper is available in letter (8½×11) size; the map is on the back. Envelopes come in various sizes; #10, A6 and 6×9 are in stock at the moment. A stationery set ($17.50) includes 12 sheets of map paper and 12 envelopes, the latter either #10 or 9×12).

• JAM Paper Map Stationery: Amazon
• JAM Paper Map Design Paper: Amazon

Updates

• Map notecards and A5 notepads from San Lorenzo Design (25 Jan 2021)

Over at Map Dragons, Betsy Miller posts 10 Great Gifts for Map Lovers that include not just books, but posters, wallpaper, notebooks and even rugs. Many items, like Eleanor Lutz’s Atlas of Space, Jim Niehues’s book of ski resort maps, and Anton Thomas’s still-forthcoming pictorial map of North America, will be familiar to regular readers of this blog.

Mapping London’s Christmas list focuses on recent books about maps of London, as you might expect.

The New York Times’s Tina Jordan looks at recent map books, starting, as you might expect, with the latest National Geographic Atlas of the World (“If you’re going to buy just one atlas this fall . . . ”). Her list also includes a couple of 2019 releases I somehow managed to miss:

An Atlas of Geographical Wonders: From Mountaintops to Riverbeds (Princeton Architectural Press, September), by Gilles Palsky, Jean-Marc Besse, Philippe Grand and Jean-Christophe Bailly, explores nineteenth-century scientific maps and tableaux, beginning with those by Alexander von Humboldt.

Also from September, Infinite Cities (University of California Press), a boxed set of Rebecca Solnit’s trilogy of atlases of San Francisco, New Orleans and New York.

Every year at about this time I post a gift guide that lists some of the noteworthy books about maps that have been published this year. If you have a map-obsessed person in your life and would like to give them something map-related—or you are a map-obsessed person and would like your broad hints to have something to link to—this guide may give you some ideas.

As before, this guide is organized loosely by theme. Its focus is on books of interest to the general reader: even though a lot of good academic work was published this year, it’s not the sort of thing to put under the tree. I’ve been maintaining a somewhat more complete list of books published over the year at the Map Books of 2019 page.

Also, this is not a list of recommendations: I haven’t even seen most of the books on this list, much less reviewed them (this has not been a good year for my reviewing). These are simply books that, based on the information available, seem fit for giving as gifts.

Travel and Tourism

Two books published this year explore the ways in which maps have been used to promote travel and tourism, and in the process collect a number of stunning examples. Airline Maps: A Century of Art and Design (Particular Books/Penguin), Mark Ovenden and Maxwell Roberts’s book about the history of the airline map, collects many examples of network maps as advertising (see blog post). In The Map Tour: A History of Tourism Told through Rare Maps (André Deutsch), Hugh Thomson explores the evolution of tourism through maps dating from the late 1600s to the present day.

Historical Maps of Cities

Three books explore the history of London and Boston through maps. Charles Booth’s London Poverty Maps (Thames & Hudson) bundles Charles Booth’s detailed maps of poverty and social class in late 19th-century London with a ton of additional contemporary and modern material (see blog post). In The A to Z History of London (Collins), Philip Parker looks at the last century of maps in London (see blog post). And The Atlas of Boston History (University of Chicago Press), edited by Boston historian Nancy Seasholes, is a modern historical atlas that traces the city’s history from the post-glacial period to the present day (see blog post).

Unusual and Nonexistent Places

Over the past few years, books collecting unusual and nonexistent places have been making regular appearances: the 2017 gift guide listed four such books. For 2019 we have two more examples of the genre, and some overlap in remit is inevitable. Dirk Liesemer’s Phantom Islands (Haus), now translated into English, explores thirty islands that turned out not to exist. It’s in the same vein as Alastair Bonnett’s Beyond the Map or Edward Brooke-Hitching’s Phantom Atlas. And The Atlas of Unusual Borders (Collins), Zoran Nikolic’s compendium of anomalous borders, enclaves and other illogical frontiers, mines the same vein as Malachy Tallack’s 2016 book, The Un-Discovered Islands.

Celestial Maps

I love astronomy. I love old maps. Three books this year cover both those obsessions with heavily illustrated collections of celestial cartography from across the centuries. Let’s start with Edward Brooke-Hitching’s latest, The Sky Atlas (Simon & Schuster UK): it’s out in the U.K. only for now; the North American edition will be released in February 2020. There’s also Elena Percivaldi’s Celestial Atlas (White Star), which covers celestial cartography from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The third edition of Nick Kanas’s Star Maps: History, Artistry and Cartography (Springer Praxis) was also released this year (I have the first edition).

World Atlases

A nice world atlas can make an awfully nice gift, and there’s usually a new atlas published just in time for that.

This year, that new atlas is the eleventh edition of the National Geographic Atlas of the World. I’m fond of the National Geographic, and own two editions of it myself: the National Geographic house style is at the very least unique among world atlases. It’s also the biggest and the most expensive ($215/£170) of the atlases out there, topping even the Times Comprehensive, ($200/£150), whose latest edition came out last year (see my review) and is still an option.

Other than that, the Oxford Atlas of the World ($90) has its annual update, and two smaller and more affordable members of the Times line of atlases got updated this year: the Universal ($50/£80) and the Desktop ($35/£20). (See blog post.)

Something Else

If you’re looking for something more academic or specialized, check out the  Map Books of 2019 page. Or take a look at the 2018 or 2017 guides: just because something came out more than a year ago doesn’t mean it’s not viable as a gift.

(Note that as an Amazon Associate, I earn income from qualifying purchases made via these links.)

A total of 17 books are included in this year’s guide, loosely organized by theme. The focus is on books that are visual and of interest to the general reader;¹ this does not even try to be a complete list of what’s been published this year. For that, check out the Map Books of 2018 page, which may suggest other gift ideas to you.

First, the Headlines

The biggest book this year, at least by weight, is without question the new (15th) edition of the Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World. The Comprehensive is the granddaddy of the Times atlas line: big and slipcased and heavy, it dwarfs all but the National Geographic atlases. It also has the most ridiculously massive—but functional—bookmark I’ve ever seen. I’ve received a review copy and should have a review for you very soon. Buy at Amazon (Canada, U.K.)—it’s significantly discounted today.

If that’s a little big for you, the Oxford Atlas of the World, which is updated every year, is more manageable in size and price. Its 25th edition came out in October. Buy at Amazon (Canada, U.K.)

In Canada at least, the most significant map-related book of the year is undoubtedly the Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada. See my post about it. This four-volume slipcased set is available in English and French versions, as well as online. Buy at Amazon (Canada, U.K.)

Those looking for a book that is about maps in all their splendour, of all kinds, from all periods, should take a look at All Over the Map: A Cartographic Odyssey. It’s by our friends Betsy Mason and Greg Miller, who write the eponymous blog for National Geographic. I just got a review copy within the last week so I haven’t had a chance to review it yet, but that’s coming. Buy at Amazon (Canada, U.K.)

If you want something fun, check out The Ordnance Survey Puzzle Book, a “mix of navigational tests, word games, code-crackers, anagrams and mathematical conundrums.” It’s out in the U.K. only; North Americans will have to try third-party sellers on Amazon (or elsewhere) or order directly from British vendors. Buy at Amazon U.K.

Historical Maps

Several books this year collect beautiful reproductions of vintage maps. I’ve reviewed two of them: Tom Harper’s Atlas: A World of Maps from the British Library (reviewed here) and Susan Schulten’s History of America in 100 Maps (reviewed here). Add to that list Thomas Reinertsen Berg’s apparently idiosyncratic Theatre of the World (blog post) and The Golden Atlas, where Edward Brooke-Hitching focuses on cartography and exploration.

Imaginary Places

The Writer’s Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Lands is a gorgeously illustrated collection of essays by writers and illustrators about how maps and stories inspire one another. As I say in my review on Tor.com, it’s basically a writer’s love letter to maps. Buy at Amazon (Canada, U.K.)

Like The Lands of Ice and Fire, Star Trek Stellar Cartography, the new edition of which came out in October, is a collection of folded maps. See blog post. Buy at Amazon (Canada, U.K.)

Cities

Manchester: Mapping the City is a collection of vintage maps, whereas Seattleness: A Cultural Atlas brings its own colourful and data-driven cartography to the table. Artist Adam Dant has two books out this year: Maps of London and Beyond is an outgrowth of his maps for Spitalfield Life (my blog post); Living Maps: An Atlas of Cities Personified looks at 28 cities around the world.

Military and War

Scotland: Defending the Nation is a collection of Scottish military mapping and maps of Scotland made by aggressors. See my blog post. Will be released in the U.S. after Christmas. Buy at Amazon (Canada, U.K.)

National Geographic’s Atlas of World War II collects both vintage and new historical maps of the war. Buy at Amazon (Canada, U.K.)

(Links to Amazon are affiliate links; I get a small cut of any sales made, which helps me keep producing this website.)

James Cheshire’s Ultimate Gift List for Map Lovers, which I mentioned earlier, includes books, shirts and other articles of clothing.

All Over the Map’s list is a diverse collection of map-related items: books, shirts, ties, glassware, notebooks, decorative maps, trail maps and so forth.

Caitlin’s list at GIS Lounge focuses on gifts for and by the GIS community, for the mapmaker in your life.

If I encounter any others, I’ll add them to this list. (Send links.)

Every year at about this time I post a gift guide that lists some of the noteworthy books about maps that have been published this year. If you have a map-obsessed person in your life and would like to give them something map-related—or you are a map-obsessed person and would your broad hints to have a link—this guide may give you some ideas.

Once again I’ve done my best to organize the books by theme. This is not a complete list of what’s been published in 2017. That’s what the Map Books of 2017 page is for: that page includes many, many other books that might also suggest themselves as gift possibilities.

Recommended

It shouldn’t be a secret that I haven’t seen or read everything on these lists; I go by what information is publicly available. But two books I have seen, and can recommend. Both Stephen J. Hornsby’s Picturing America: The Golden Age of Pictorial Maps (reviewed here) and The Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union Secretly Mapped the World by John Davies and Alex Kent (reviewed here) are beautiful collections of historically significant maps with informative accompanying text.

Magnificently Miscellaneous

These books gather maps that are, shall we say, a bit off the beaten track. Cinemaps does for movies what his 2015 book Plotted did for books: it maps the storylines. Londonist Mapped is a collection of hand-drawn maps of the city; it’s out in the U.K. only for now. Meanwhile, James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti’s Where the Animals Go, a very-interesting-looking collection of maps of animal tracks made from field biologists’ tracking data, finally has a U.S. edition.

Historical Map Collections

If you like collections of old maps, of course there’s Picturing America and The Red Atlas, mentioned above. Other options: the companion guide to the British Library’s 2016 map exhibition, Maps in the 20th Century: Drawing the Line, saw publication in the U.S. earlier this year; Philip Parker’s History of Britain in Maps is out now in the U.K. and coming to North America soonish; and Peter Whitfield’s Charting the Oceans and London: A Life in Maps (the latter accompanying a previous British Library exhibition) got new editions in 2017.

An Expensive Historical Atlas

Earlier this year, Princeton University Press published the English translation of Andrea Carandini’s Atlas of Ancient Rome. I’ve heard it’s gorgeous. At $200 (£150), it’s certainly expensive. But a 1,300-page, two-volumed, slipcased, historical atlas of ancient Rome might be, for the right person, absolutely the right gift. (See the book website.)

Atlases of Nonexistent and Unusual Places

This is a surprisingly well-populated genre of books: compendia of unusual geographies, obscure locations, map quirks and odd facts. Not so map-heavy as the other sections, but no less interesting to map fiends like us.

Alastair Bonnet’s Beyond the Map explores disputed enclaves, emerging islands and other idiosyncracies of geography (a U.S. edition is coming in 2018). Bjørn Berge’s Nowherelands looks at out-of-the-way countries that once existed, but don’t any more. Malachy Tallack’s 2016 book about islands that were once thought real but have since been removed from the map, The Un-Discovered Islands, now has a U.S. edition. Piotr Wilkowiecki and Michał Gaszyński’s Explorers Atlas (also U.K.-only for now) is an illustrated collection of factoids.

Other possibilities from last year include Atlas Obscura (reviewed here), Edward Brooke-Hitching’s Phantom Atlas, Travis Elborough’s Atlas of Improbable Places, and Aude de Tocqueville’s Atlas of Lost Cities. (Like I said: well-populated.)

World Atlases

The Oxford Atlas of the World gets a new edition every year: this year’s is the 24th. The various Times atlases come out on a more staggered schedule. This year saw updates to the Reference (which is inexpensive) and the Mini (which is cute and tiny and, hint hint, would fit nicely in a stocking).

For another option that’s still relatively recent, consider the Times Concise Atlas, the second largest Times atlas and roughly equivalent to the Oxford atlas; the 13th edition came out last year.

For More Books …

… see the Map Books of 2017 page.

(Links to Amazon are affiliate links; I get a small cut of any sales made.)

• All Over the Map’s 10 gifts for map lovers and travellers.
• A-Z Maps’ Christmas gift ideas for map lovers.
• Co.Design’s gift guide for map nerds.
• Geoawesome Christmas gift guide for 2016.
• Geographical’s books of the year.
• Geo Lounge has seven geography books to add to your bookshelf.
• GIS Lounge has seven nifty gift ideas for the GIS person in your life.
• Mapping London’s Christmas List 2016.
• The Ordnance Survey’s top five mappy Christmas gifts.
• Transit Maps has gift guides for books and posters.

Any others out there?

Calendars are apparently still a thing. If they’re still a thing for you, here are a few 2017 calendars that have, as you might expect, maps as their focus:

• Antique Maps (The British Library)
• Antique Maps of the World (Flame Tree)
• Scottish Maps (National Library of Scotland)
• Vintage Maps in wall and desk sizes (Cavallini)
• Wonderground Map of London (MacDonald Gill)

(Links go to Amazon. If you buy something, I get a cut.)

Previously: 2016 Holiday Gift Guide: Books; Wonderground Map Calendar.

This year, as you will see, I’ve organized the books by theme: we have five atlases of unusual and non-existent places, several colouring books, and a large number of historical map collections, among other books.

This is by no means a complete list of what’s been published in 2016. The Map Books of 2016 page includes many, many other books that might also suggest themselves as gift possibilities.

Atlases of the Unusual and Non-Existent

Books that call themselves atlases, but really aren’t, are thick on the ground this year: these are illustrated compendiums of fascinating, unusual or simply made-up places around the world. In The Spectator, Alex Burghart looks at three of them: Atlas Obscura (which I reviewed here), Edward Brooke-Hitching’s Phantom Atlas, and Travis Elborough’s Atlas of Improbable Places. To which I’d add Aude de Tocqueville’s Atlas of Lost Cities, a catalogue of abandoned places that came out last April, and Malachy Tallack’s Un-Discovered Islands.

Children, crafts and colo(u)ring Books

Colouring books (or, if you’re American, coloring books) have been all the rage lately, and the past year has seen several such books with maps as their subject matter: A-Z Maps came out of the gate early back in October 2015, with Maps: A Colouring Book. Since then, we’ve seen Gretchen Peterson’s City Maps: A Coloring Book for Adults, the Ordnance Survey’s Great British Colouring Map, and the re-emergence of William Hole’s 17th-century illustrations of Michael Drayton’s poetry, repackaged as a 21st-century colouring book called Albion’s Glorious Ile—which is available both as a single volume and pamphlet-sized sections.

If colouring books aren’t for kids any more, but you’re looking for something child-sized, consider Justin Miles’s Ultimate Mapping Guide for Kids.

If making art is your thing, but you’re not so much about the colouring books, look at Jill Berry’s latest book on personal mapmaking, Making Art From Maps.

Historical Maps

These books explore some aspect of old and historical cartography. (Maps of the 20th Century and Great Britain get their own sections, below.) Cartographic Japan is a collection of essays exploring Japanese maps from the late 1500s. China at the Center (reviewed here) accompanies an exhibition of two pivotal Chinese world maps. Great City Maps collects historical and contemporary city maps. Jeremy Black’s Maps of War is a history of war cartography. Treasures from the Map Room is a diverse sampling of the Bodleian Library’s extensive cartographic holdings (I’m currently working on a review).

The Twentieth Century

Art, marketing and propaganda meet in the 20th Century. Paul Jarvis’s Mapping the Airways draws from the British Airways archives to provide a history of aeronautical cartography. War Map is the companion volume to an exhibition of pictorial conflict maps that wrapped up earlier this month. And speaking of companion volumes, don’t forget the big one: Maps and the 20th Century: Drawing the Line accompanies the British Library’s current map exhibition.

Great Britain in Maps

Old maps of Britain, particularly at the city and county level, continue to find a renewed existence in book form. Birlinn continues its line of regional atlases of historical maps with Oxford: Mapping the City and Scotland: Mapping the Islands. Also seeing print this year was Somerset Mapped and a reprint collection of John Speed’s county maps called Britain’s Tudor Maps.

New York, New York: Maps and the City

New York City is the subject of two new books in which art, story and cartography intersect: Katherine Harmon’s third volume of map art, You Are Here: NYC: Mapping the Soul of the City; and Rebecca Solnit’s third city atlas, Nonstop Metropolis. (A review of You Are Here: NYC is forthcoming.)

Data into Maps

Where the Animals Go provides beautiful maps of animal tracking data, People and Places is a human atlas of the United Kingdom, and Speaking American maps the American vernacular: “who says what, and where they say it.”

World Atlases

When it comes to big, satisfying world atlases, the most recent to come out are the Oxford Atlas of the World, which is updated every year, and the Times Concise Atlas of the World. The Concise is the second-largest of the Times world atlases: see the comparative chart. (The largest atlases—the Times Comprehensive and the National Geographic—were last revised in 2014.)

(Links go to Amazon. If you buy something, I get a cut.)

Some of these books you’ve seen me blog about before; others I’m mentioning for the first time.

Historical Maps

Mappa Mundi: Hereford’s Curious Map by Sarah Arrowsmith (Logaston Press, April 2015). “The first chapter of the book tackles some of the questions asked by the many people who visit Hereford Cathedral today to see the Mappa Mundi. Who made the map? Did they think the world was flat? How was it made, and where? The book then shows us the map seen through the eyes of a medieval visitor to the cathedral.”

Great Escapes: The Story of MI9’s Second World War Escape and Evasion Maps by Barbara Bond (Times Books, October 2015). A history of the escape maps produced for prisoners of war. My blog post.

Revolution: Mapping the Road to American Independence, 1755-1783 by Richard H. Brown and Paul E. Cohen (W. W. Norton, October 2015). “When warfare erupted between Britain and her colonists in 1775, maps provided graphic news about military matters. A number of the best examples are reproduced here, including some from the personal collections of King George III, the Duke of Northumberland, and the Marquis de Lafayette. Other maps from institutional and private collections are being published for the first time. In all, sixty significant and beautiful cartographic works from 1755 to 1783 illustrate this intriguing era.”

Mapping the Second World War by Peter Chasseaud (Collins, October 2015). A collection of historical maps; a sequel to Chasseaud’s 2013 book Mapping the First World War. Appears to be available in Britain only. My blog post.

The History of Cartography, Volume Six: Cartography in the Twentieth Century edited by Mark Monmonier (University of Chicago Press, May 2015). The sixth installment of the massive History of Cartography Project takes two physical books and nearly two thousand pages to cover mapmaking in the twentieth century. (Volumes one through three can be downloaded as PDFs. Volumes four and five are still in preparation.) My blog post.

Map Collections

Map: Exploring the World (Phaidon Press, September 2015). A collection of “300 stunning maps from all periods and from all around the world,” assembled by “an international panel of cartographers, academics, map dealers and collectors.” My blog post.

Mind the Map: Creative Mapmaking and Cartography edited by Antonis Antoniou, Robert Klanten and Sven Ehmann (Gestalten, September 2015). “[A] showcase that reflects the broad range of work now being created by a new generation of mapmakers from around the world including classically legible maps, artistic experiments, editorial illustrations, city views, vacation guides, and global overviews.” My blog post.

The Curious Map Book by Ashley Baynton-Williams (British Library/University of Chicago Press, October 2015). “With The Curious Map Book, Ashley Baynton-Williams gathers an amazing, chronologically ordered variety of cartographic gems, mainly from the vast collection of the British Library.”

Transit Maps of the World by Mark Ovenden (Particular Books/Penguin USA, November 2015). A revised and expanded edition of Mark’s compilation of every urban transit map on the planet. (Here’s my review of the first edition.) My blog post.

The Art of Illustrated Maps: A Complete Guide to Creative Mapmaking’s History, Process and Inspiration by John Roman (HOW Design, November 2015). A rare look at “illustrated” or conceptual (rather than strictly geographic) maps. “This book maps the origins and history of creative cartography, analyzes why our brains so easily relate to conceptual maps, presents how professional artists create illustrated maps, and showcases the works of contemporary map illustrators from around the world.”

Atlas of Prejudice: The Complete Stereotype Map Collection by Yanko Tsvetkov (CreateSpace, July 2015). Yanko Tsvetkov’s maps of stereotypes and prejudices are a staple of the cartographic Web. The Atlas of Prejudice contains all the maps from his two previous self-published collections, plus 25 more. My blog post.

Vargic’s Miscellany of Curious Maps by Martin Vargic (Michael Joseph, October 2015/HarperCollins, December 2015). Quirky, high-quality maps of idiosyncratic things from a teenage Slovakian design student. My blog post.

Maps and Literature

Plotted: A Literary Atlas by Andrew DeGraff (Zest Books, October 2015). DeGraff’s distinct and idiosyncratic maps aren’t necessarily of books you’d expect maps for (e.g., A Christmas Carol); these are maps of the stories, not their setting, which means a completely different perspective that takes into account both time and distance travelled. My blog post.

The Art of The Lord of the Rings by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (HarperCollins/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, October 2015). A collection of about 180 of the maps, sketches and drawings Tolkien created to help him visualize the world he was inventing. Sample images. My blog post.

This year’s list includes several lavishly illustrated histories of maps and globes, interesting reads about map thieves and forgotten places, an a couple of guides to map art and personal mapmaking.

Once again, books bought through these Amazon affiliate links (routed to what my web server thinks is your nearest English-language Amazon store) make me a little money. Thanks for your support.

Illustrated Histories of Map and Mapmaking

1. Great Maps by Jerry Brotton (Dorling Kindersley, August 2014). The author of A History of the World in Twelve Maps returns with an illustrated look at the history of cartography through nearly 60 historical maps. Wired Map Lab.
2. Globes: 400 Years of Exploration, Navigation, and Power by Sylvia Sumira (University of Chicago Press, April 2014). A history of globes from the late fifteenth to the late nineteenth century, showcasing the British Library’s extensive globe collection. My blog post.
3. Finding Longitude by Richard Dunn and Rebekah Higgitt (Collins, June 2014). Official publication accompanying a National Maritime Museum exhibition on the quest for longitude. My blog post.
4. The Times History of the World in Maps (Times Atlases, November 2014). 11×14-inch, 256-page atlas containing original historical maps.

Books About Maps

5. London: The Selden Map and the Making of a Global City, 1549-1689 by Robert K. Batchelor (University of Chicago Press, January 2014). Batchelor uses the information on the Selden Map to demonstrate how the city of London “flourished because of its many encounters, engagements, and exchanges with East Asian trading cities.” My blog post.
6. The Map Thief by Michael Blanding (Gotham Books, May 2014). A book-length study of Forbes Smiley, the notorious map dealer caught stealing nearly a hundred maps from libraries in the U.S. and Britain. My review.
7. Off the Map/Unruly Places by Alastair Bonnett. Short essays on lost and forgotten places around the world. First published as Off the Map: Lost Spaces, Invisible Cities, Forgotten Islands, Feral Places and What They Tell Us About the World (Aurum Press, April 2014) in the U.K., it came out under the title of Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies in Canada (Viking Canada, July 2014) and the United States (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, July 2014). The Guardian has a review.

Map Art and Personal Mapmaking

8. Map Art Lab: 52 Exciting Art Explorations in Mapmaking, Imagination, and Travel by Jill K. Berry and Linden McNeilly (Quarry Books, May 2014). A collection of “52 map-related activities set into weekly exercises, beginning with legends and lines, moving through types and styles, and then creating personalized maps that allow you to journey to new worlds.” My blog post.
9. Mapping It Out edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist (Thames and Hudson, June 2014). Obrist invited more than a hundred contributors “to create a personal map of their own, in whatever form and showing whatever terrain they choose, whether real-world or imaginary.” My blog post.
10. Make Map Art: Creatively Illustrate Your World by Nate Padavick and Salli Swindell (Chronicle Books, February 2014). A “creative toolkit” that includes a booklet and 30 pull-out sheets to use as templates for personal mapmaking projects. My blog post.

Maphead by Ken Jennings (Simon & Schuster, September 2011. ISBN 978-1439167175). Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings’s book about map nerdery, Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks, came out last month. Seth Stevenson reviewed it for Slate: “His sprightly, good-natured memoir combines light introspection, rafts of geographic trivia, and admiring profiles of fellow map obsessives. Along the way, Jennings weaves in musings on the importance of maps as cultural artifacts–be they yellowed scrolls with hand-drawn sea monsters or satellite snapshots that can geolocate single blades of grass.” Excerpts are available on Jennings’s website.
Amazon | Publisher

(Previously: Ken Jennings’s Map Book Is Coming in September; Ken Jennings Is Writing a Map Book.)

Maps by Paula Scher (Princeton Architectural Press, November 2011. ISBN 9781616890339). Princeton Architectural Press has published a number of excellent map art books lately, including Katharine Harmon’s You Are Here and The Map as Art and Kris Harzinski’s collection of hand-drawn maps, From Here to There (my review). In November they’re publishing Maps, a hardcover book reproducing artist Paula Scher’s large-scale map paintings, created between 1998 and 2010. Samples are available on Scher’s website. Via @TAGFineArts.
Amazon | Publisher

(Previously: New Paula Scher Exhibition; Paula Scher: The Maps.)

The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, 13th edition (Times Books, September 2011. ISBN 978-0-00-741913-5). Normally the publication of a new edition of the Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, thought by many to be the gold standard of world atlases, wouldn’t ruffle too many feathers. But the atlas’s publishers got into trouble when scientists challenged the claim that Greenland had lost 15 percent of its permanent ice cover — a loss dramatically apparent in the atlas’s map of the island. But, as BBC News shows, the map is not consistent with satellite observations. The publishers have apologized for the 15 percent statement, which was in the press release but not the atlas itself, and is now reviewing the map of Greenland itself; see their clarification. See also GIS Lounge. Amazon | Publisher

The Times Atlas of London (Times Books, October 2011. ISBN 978-0-00-743422-0). Arriving this month in the U.K., and presumably with much less controversy, The Times Atlas of London, which the publisher describes as an “[a]uthoritative and prestigious atlas with detailed mapping and photographs for the whole of Greater London. Fully up-to-date reference maps, statistics, images and historical mapping give an exceptionally detailed view of London helping you explore this great city.” The Times Atlas of London also comes to Canada in November and Australia in December, but not the United States. Amazon | Publisher

The Times Mapping the Railways by Julian Holland and David Spaven (Times Books, September 2011. ISBN 978-0-00-743599-9). For those interested in railway maps, there is now a book out that is for once not by Mark Ovenden. Also from Times Books, the awkwardly titled Times Mapping the Railways is, from what I can gather, a history of British railways told through maps — more than a hundred of them according to the publisher’s materials. It’s out in Britain now, Australia in October and Canada in November; like The Times Atlas of London, short of ordering from a British or Commonwealth book shop, it’s unavailable in the United States. Amazon | Publisher

London Map Book. The London Mapping Festival has announced that they’re planning to publish a map book in time for Christmas; presumably we’ll have more details soon. Via @bcsweb.