The rising importance of digital mapping processes, whether in
the hands of large corporate entities like Google or through the
profusion of user-generated mapping tools and digital geospatial
data, marks a shift away from the traditional skills of the
professional cartographer. In the face of this digital turn,
many university mapping repositories, those places where rows of
maps hang on specially designed racks and lay piled on each
other in map drawers, have now mostly disappeared. This shift
presents a perfect time to track the connections between the
cartographic traditions of the past and how they may inform
critical cartographies of the present. This is the project of
The Map Reader: Theories of Mapping Practice and Cartographic
Representation which draws together more than 50 extracts from
peer-reviewed journals and monographs to trace the intellectual
traditions that have informed a critical engagement with maps
since the middle of the 20th Century. Martin Dodge, Rob Kitchin
and Chris Perkins have go