Mapping the efficiency of slave labor
Recently I wrote a piece for the Disunion series on Edward Atkinson, who creatively used a map to demonstrate the inefficiency of slave labor. Atkinson is perhaps best known for...
thematic maps Posts
The future of thematic mapping?
Several people have sent me this population map, made by Brandon Martin-Anderson, which represents one dot for each person counted in the 2010 U.S. Census. The link takes you to...
The legacy of Francis Amasa Walker: graphic, infographic, and cartographic
This past week I wrote a piece for Fast Company Design about the legacy of Francis Amasa Walker. As the Superintendent of the 9th Census in 1870, Walker took the...
The many maps in Spielberg’s “Lincoln”
I just saw Steven Speilberg’s film “Lincoln,” and was amazed by the space given to maps on the set. The maps are never referenced directly, for the plot of the...
The cartographic response to the secession crisis
Last April, CSPAN taped a lecture in my Civil War course for its “American History TV” program. The lecture aired this weekend, and I was heartened that people would actually watch a...
An alternative map of the American west
Could the map of the west have been drawn in a fundamentally different way? Last month I was interviewed by BackStory with the American History Guys for a show on...
Why Republicans mapped slavery in the 1856 election
Jon Dotson, owner of Old World Auctions, recently showed me a political broadside from the 1856 campaign, when the new Republican Party ran its first presidential candidate, the celebrated western...
New exhibit of thematic maps
John Delaney, a curator of the Historic Maps Collection at Princeton University Library, has created an excellent online exhibit of thematic maps (it may take a minute to load). In...