“Cartography concisely and clearly captures not just the main strands of Edney’s own work over the last several decades, but also the major questions facing map historians today. Filled with original and exciting scholarship, this book will be equally important for specialists in map history and for those geographers, humanists, and mapmakers who want a rigorous discussion of how to understand and analyze maps.”
— William Rankin, author of After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territor
“Edney commands a breathtaking view of the history of map making. From his years of spadework in archives and classrooms to his perch at the helm of the massive History of Cartography project, he has gradually come to see fundamental problems in the very categories through which the cartographic enterprise is conventionally understood. Cartography: The Ideal and Its History offers both a sharp critique of current practice and a call to reorient the field of map studies. A landmark contribution.”
— Kären Wigen, coeditor of Cartographic Japan
“For two decades Edney has produced thoughtful and penetrating scholarship. In his most ambitious work to date, he questions the very concept of ‘cartography’ to argue that this flawed ideal has hobbled the study of maps. With direct and tenacious prose, Edney has written an essential work that challenges us to grapple with the fundamental assumptions that undergird the field.”
— Susan Schulten, author of A History of America in 100 Maps
"[An] intellectually bracing and marvellously provocative account of how the mythical ideal of cartography developed over time and, in the process, distorted our understanding of maps. . . . He has convincingly overturned the presumptions of an entire discipline and those who both practise and study it. . . . Edney will undoubtedly remain at the heart of navigating our way through the seductive, perplexing and endlessly changing landscape of maps."
— Times Higher Education
“What is at stake is addressed in the short final chapter. The ideal of cartography is a sleight of hand because it conceives maps as crystallized depictions of the world that can be read back by map users and therefore diverts attention from the processes of their production, circulation and effects. Edney has written a powerful book, often laced with humour and gnomic chapter headings (my favourite is ‘cartography is a map of mapping’). Edney has done a great job of bringing his arguments to a wider audience, and it will be interesting to see where he goes next.”
— Imago Mundi
“Edney’s Cartography provides a corrective, a reimagined intellectual framework for maps and mapping that will, when engaged and operationalized, greatly broaden our understanding of the wondrous array of inscriptions and practices we call maps and mapping.”
— Isis
"Without doubt, Matthew H. Edney can be considered one of the most influential and productive map historians of the present."
— American Association of Geographers Review of Books
"This examination of mapmaking ideals versus their practices distinguishes normative historical approaches from sociocultural critiques in anglophone, German and French literatures. Edney unpacks the images and projections of space and time that have been kneaded into an integral tradition of practices and materials. . . . this is a critical contribution to the mapping of transdisciplinary and transnational histories and philosophies of science."
— British Journal for the History of Science
"In light of the numerous attacks on cartography, Edney’s Cartography: The Ideal and Its History may perhaps be the nail in the coffin of cartography as we now know it. . . .Simply put, all those interested in the future of the map, of map studies, and cartography should purchase a copy of this book, read it intently and with an open mind, and take its ideas seriously."
— Cartographic Perspectives