| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Geographic Revolution in Early America: Maps, Literacy, and National Identity. By Martin Brückner. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. xvi, 276 pp. Cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-8078-3000-3. Paper, $22.50, ISBN 0-8078-5672-X.)

What does it mean to "read" a map? Building on the imaginative work of the late J. B. Harley and other recent historians of cartography, Martin Brückner reminds us that we cannot simply see maps as "neutral mirrors of nature" that give us the lay of the land or tell us how to get from point A to point B; rather, we now understand them "as value-laden images, as subjective representations of historical practice ... [and] distinctly political texts" (p. 56). Brückner offers a sophisticated reading of maps of North America from the colonial era through the early republic, and this book—both its images and its text—certainly merits an attentive reading by scholars.

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