Our NatGeo Maps office here in Colorado was featured on Disney+’s Disney Insider show episode 10 that dropped today! Watch 0:47-7:15 to see our boss talking about what we do! My 7-second, focused-cartographer cameo starts at 2:30! pic.twitter.com/p49B6Z1NfY

— Aly D. Ollivierre, MSc, GISP (@AlyD_VT) December 8, 2021

First, the National Geographic Atlas of the World, a new edition of which comes out every four years. This year’s is the 11th.

I have to confess that I’m fond of the National Geographic: compared to other atlases it does its own thing with political maps that eschew coloured relief and explain every little boundary dispute and controversy in little red letters. It’s also enormous, larger in dimension than the Times Comprehensive (though not as heavy) and with a list price of $215/£170 is slightly more expensive. National Geographic’s page doesn’t go into detail as to what changes were made for the 11th edition, which is a pity. (Does it have Eswatini and North Macedonia, for example?)

The Oxford Atlas of the World is a lot smaller and more affordable. At $90, it slots between the Times Universal and Concise atlases in terms of list price, though its page count is that of the more expensive Concise. It’s also updated every year; this year’s edition is the 26th. And the publisher’s page does list some of the updates. (Eswatini and North Macedonia? Yes!)

As for the Times line of atlases, the most recent to be updated was the third-tier Times Universal Atlas ($50/£80), the 4th edition of which came out in August. Prior to that, the 5th edition of the affordable Times Desktop Atlas ($35/£20) was released in February. The 15th edition of the top-of-range Times Comprehensive Atlas ($200/£150) came out in the fall of 2018: I reviewed it here.

The Atlas of Moons is National Geographic’s interactive guide to every single moon in the solar system (except for a few moons of dwarf planets and asteroids that we know next to nothing about). The big ones get interactive globes and additional description (as do Mars’s moons Phobos and Deimos, because we have imagery for them). Note that this is an extremely resource-intensive page that will use gigabytes of RAM if you let it.

For the last two and a half years, Betsy and Greg have written a blog of the same name for National Geographic; from 2013 to 2015 they did the same thing with Map Lab, a map blog for Wired. Their background with regard to maps is similar to mine: “We are not experts in cartography or its history; we’re journalists with a lifelong love of maps who were eager to learn more,” they write in the book’s introduction.

It’s an approach that’s worked well enough for me as well: there’s something to be said for beginner’s mind, and for approaching your subject unconstrained by what you already know. One thing I’ve noticed in more than 15 years of map blogging is how siloed mappers are: antique map collectors, GIS pros, academic cartographers, web mappers, map illustrators—they all work in their own corners, and there isn’t as much cross-fertilization between them as you might think. It may take non-specialists like us to see the big picture, because we don’t know enough about any one corner. “Maps” is too big a subject to master.

In that vein, “eager to learn more” can yield real results. Those results can be awfully eclectic, and All Over the Map is proof of that. There’s no real attempt to limit the scope of their subject: the book’s title, though borrowed from the blog, is not out of place. The book is loosely organized by theme, and those themes are themselves fairly broadly defined: “Waterways,” “Cities,” “Conflicts and Crisis,” among others; within that thin structure, we are introduced to maps of every time, place and subject: maps from early modern Europe and pre-colonial Mexico, maps of the Moon and the ocean floor, of ski hills, of rugged terrain, of enemy territory, of the flows of water and people. Online maps are reproduced with just as much care as an ancient manuscript.

Turning a blog into a book works better than you might think. The essays in All Over the Map (the book) have been substantially reworked and rewritten from their first appearance in All Over the Map (the blog). They work well in book form, for a couple of reasons. One, Betsy and Greg are more thorough than I am: whereas my old-school type of blogging emphasizes quick links with minimal explanation, they dig further into the subject, interviewing experts and even the subject (if still living).¹ In other words, they’re journalists practicing journalism. And two, the form of the book—this largeish (30 × 25 cm), full-colour book—allows for the maps to take proper centre stage. It flips the relationship of the web page: the text is tiny, the images large. The maps can be appreciated better this way. Astonishingly, the blog is better as a book.

The maps they include are familiar, at least to me: they and I were working the same source material at the same time, and I don’t disagree with any of their choices. Not having a theme means that there is no reason not to include an interesting map, or to include an uninteresting map because it’s somehow important.

This is as catholic, as inclusive, a collection as I have ever encountered. As an introduction to where things stand in the mapping world, to the best of what I’ve seen lately, I’d have a hard time coming up with something better.

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.

All Over the Map: A Cartographic Odyssey
by Betsy Mason and Greg Miller
National Geographic, October 2018
Amazon | Bookshop

Map books coming out this month:

The Art of Cartographics (Goodman) is available now in the U.K. but won’t come out in North America until March 2018. The publisher describes it as “a stunning collection of maps designed in a unique way. […] This carefully curated book selects the most creative and interesting map design projects from around the world, and offers inspiration for designers and map-lovers alike. Covering themes including power, gentrification, literature, animals, plants and food, and showcasing handrawn, painted, digital, 3D sculpted and folded maps, Cartographics offers a slice of social history that is as beautiful as it is fascinating.” Buy at Amazon U.K. | Pre-order at Amazon

In a similar vein, while the British edition of Where the Animals Go, a compendium of spectacular maps of animal paths, came out last November, U.S. readers have had to wait until now: W. W. Norton is publishing the U.S. edition, and it comes out next week. Buy at Amazon

Also out next week: the National Geographic Atlas of Beer (National Geographic). I have no information about the quantity or quality of the maps therein, but according to the publisher the book does have some: “The most visually stunning and comprehensive beer atlas available, this richly illustrated book includes more beers and more countries than any other book of its kind. Including beer recommendations from Garrett Oliver, the famed brewmaster of Brooklyn Brewery, and written by ‘beer geographers’ Nancy Hoalst-Pullen and Mark Patterson, this indispensable guide features more than 100 illuminating maps and over 200 beautiful color photos.” Buy at Amazon

Related: Map Books of 2017.

Google Maps turned 10 years old on Sunday—a milestone observed by Samuel Gibbs in the Guardian. See also Liz Gannes’s retrospective at Re/Code. My reaction on launch day was pretty effusive—I was blown away mainly by the user interface. But it wasn’t immediately dominant: it took roughly four years for Google to surpass MapQuest in traffic.

Meanwhile, the Pro version of Google Earth, which used to cost $400/year, is now free. Google Earth itself launched in June 2005, so is approaching its own 10-year anniversary, but it began its existence a few years earlier as Keyhole EarthViewer 3D.

Speaking of map anniversaries, National Geographic Maps is marking its centennial.

The photo above marks another anniversary: It shows Apollo 14 astronaut Ed Mitchell consulting a map during his second lunar EVA on February 6, 1971. Apollo 14 returned to Earth 44 years ago yesterday.