Subject Guides: Cartography and Geovisualization: Home

Featured Resources

How to Lie with Maps by Mark Monmonier
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 significant technological changes in the making and use of maps. The introduction and spread of digital maps and mapping software, however, have added new wrinkles to the ever-evolving landscape of modern mapmaking. Fully updated for the digital age, this new edition of How to Lie with Maps examines the myriad ways that technology offers new opportunities for cartographic mischief, deception, and propaganda. While retaining the same brevity, range, and humor as its predecessors, this third edition includes significant updates throughout as well as new chapters on image maps, prohibitive cartography, and online maps. It also includes an expanded section of color images and an updated list of sources for further reading.

[Video]. Plunder and Possession. (2010). BBC Worldwide Learning
(NSCC W# and password required)
Sparking awareness of distant lands, maps have likewise tempted the ambitious to pillage and conquer through the centuries. This program examines cartography’s role in a disturbing dynamic—that which spans the urge to discover for discovery’s sake and the relentless drive to extend power, reap faraway resources, and satisfy greed. Profiling the father of geography, Claudius Ptolemy, and his ideas for transferring spherical configurations to a flat surface, the film revisits the voyages of Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, and Sir Walter Raleigh—all of whom served as instruments of political and economic domination as well as more scholarly concerns. The theme is further developed through accounts of the Dutch East India Company as well as today’s so-called “Cold Rush”—the race to exploit Arctic oil and gas reserves. Part of the series Mapping the World.