The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography

Brian Harley can be considered a figurehead in the debate on more human and humane approaches to cartography. This was something very unusual or even daring in the 1980s. The book gathers a selection of some of his most important writings on the history of cartography, the reading between the lines of maps, and the ethics of map making. (Well, I would have included several others, too... a selection always leaves out some stuff.) The articles are dense and packed with theoretical underpinnings that are not everyone's cup of tea, but Harley's merit was to provoke a shift in cartography to a pluralistic idea of mapping and map making - and this is priceless. Some of the pieces in this book look back to more than 20 years of controversies and may not necessarily reflect what is discussed in cartographic theory today, but, nevertheless, this collection is a "classic" for people interested in the "anatomy" and the "making-off" of cartography.

Marxist and post-modernistic verbiage from a cartographic historian who ought to have stuck to his area of expertise. This book is a mish-mash of politically correct essays on the evils of imperialism, racism, eurocentrism, etc. as expressed in maps. Harley was never one to let a trendy leftist ideology go unabsorbed and it shows in these tepid and unreadable essays. A fine example of what's wrong with contemporary academic thought.

J. Brian Harley played an important role in introducing a new vision of maps and mapping, with a critique of the positivist epistemology that claimed that maps constitute scientific instruments which provide an accurate, objective vision of the world. Harley demonstrates how maps are in fact conditioned by the social and political framework of their society, that they show and hide informations according to the world view of the dominant players. Essential reading.