Radical Cartography: How Changing Our Maps Can Change Our World

by William Rankin

A stunning, thought-provoking exploration of how maps shape our understanding of the world—featuring over 150 full-color maps in a gorgeous package

Maps are ubiquitous in contemporary life­­—not just for navigation, but for making sense of our society, our environment, and even ourselves. In an instant, huge datasets can be plotted on command and we can explore faraway places in exacting detail. Yet the new ease and speed of data mapping can often lead to the same problem that has been around for over-simplified maps are used as tools for top-down control.

Cartographer and historian William Rankin argues that it’s time to reimagine what a map can be and how it can be used. Maps are not neutral visualizations of facts They are innately political, defining how the world is divided, what becomes visible and what stays hidden, and whose voices are heard. What matters isn’t the topics or the data, but how maps make arguments about how the world works. And the consequences are enormous. A map’s visual argument can change how cities are designed and how rivers flow, how wars are fought and how land claims are settled, how children learn about race and how colonialism becomes a habit of mind. Maps don’t just show us information—they help construct our world.

Brimming with vibrant maps, including many “radical” maps created by Rankin himself and by other cutting-edge mapmakers, Radical Cartography exposes the consequences of how maps represent boundaries, layers, people, projections, color, scale, and time. Challenging the map as a tool of the status quo, Rankin empowers readers to embrace three unexpected values for the future of uncertainty, multiplicity, and subjectivity. Changing the tools—changing the maps—can change the questions we ask, the answers we accept, and the world we build.

Genres: Nonfiction, Cartography, History, Maps, Politics, Geography

304 pages, Hardcover

Published November 11, 2025

Reviews

[Tina Panik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rankin will change the way we think about maps with this well-written, comprehensive, visually impressive work.

This was an ARC

[Cole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I mean, 3 stars come from the maps alone. I’ve seen some of Rankin’s work before and it is really interesting to hear all of the balancing decisions that go into them. I think especially the chapter surrounding population was really informative.

I wish there was a little less subjective “here’s what I like” in some chapters, especially when discussing like, color and the readability of maps. There was a lot of vague discussion about experiments of how people understand maps, but very little reporting of that. Felt like a strange gap.

I’d say a solid 3.75 / 5

[Eli Baldwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this a lot. It’s a great collection of maps, history, and anecdotes, and gives practical perspective on more effective interrogation of any map to understand its argument(s).

the cover design is ugly, though. what’s up with that?

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

"First, we must have a look at the map; without a map, political talk is so much claptrap". Leon Trotsky. Maps lie to us. Charts lie to us. Statistics lie to us. William Rankin, cartographer and teacher, urges us to redraw and rethink our planet. Maps have changed the course of American history. Abraham Lincoln kept an unusual map in his office desk drawer throughout the Civil War, depicting the percentage of slaves as part of the Black population in the United States by county, North and South. Why? He wanted to measure the impact abolition would have on the economy, politics and racial demographics of America. This was not mental wandering. Lincoln used this information to exempt the border states, Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky, from the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, assuming their slave populations were not all that large. Rankin points out that such a map is not without its controversial aspects. Had Lincoln studied a map of the density of slaves per county, instead of percentage (Lincoln did not understand the difference between the two) he would easily have seen that Maryland contained a significant slave population, close to 90,000 at the start of the war. Lincoln, based on a misreading of his own map, was saving slavery from extinction just a stone's throw away from the White House. Rankin takes this for proof that no map is prima facie objective, every map is political, and the facts contained therein can and should be challenged. The most famous battle of the maps in history is Mercatur versus the Peters projection of the world. Mercatur took it for granted Europe should be the center of the planet, increasing its size to the detriment of Africa and South America. His global map is perfect for justifying colonial ambitions and claims. Peters, reflecting the rise of the Third World after 1960, restored these two continents to a proper perspective, reinforcing Arnold Toynbee's claim that "Europe is only a peninsula of the Asian continent". Mercatur and Peters were drawing political maps, even if they didn't know it. Suppose we consider the globe from the perspective of where major sea and rail road transport hubs are located. This map, reproduced by Rankin, shows some ninety percent of commodities are transported among and between just ten percent of the globe's surface, nearly all in the Norther Hemisphere. Colonialism has simply become neocolonialism. American and European domination of the global economy is still in place. A look at a modern atlas might lead to the conclusion that all 193 independent countries are equally inhabited and viable. Wrong; 93 percent of the world's population lives above the Equator. The global south is a people exporter. American cartography offers vivid clues to the development of the nation, though not always to its credit. A map of lynchings in America shows extralegal murders of Black men and women occurred principally in regions of the South with significant Black farm ownership and recent white migration; in other words, ethnic cleansing. A 1950 map of U.S. religious affiliation depicts South Florida having next to no Catholic residents, just before the transformative wave of Cuban refugees. The U.S.A. illustrated by animal and crop production shows Iowa corn hub and hog butcher to the nation, but a map of educational attainment highlights how Iowa is among the most educated of the fifty states, setting up the political contest between those with a high school degree and college-graduates prevalent in twenty-first century America. Rankin is nor arguing mapmakers deliberately lie. Maps, like charts and statistics, can and do mislead the reader if they are considered the sole truth about its subject. Changing the world through maps means considering more than one topic and one measurement in the search for cartographical truth. Out with certainty, in with diversity. Rankin is the kind of teacher we should all pray to have; he presents facts as a kaleidoscope.

[James S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author is a hotshot professor at Yale who went to Harvard, so this book is very academic, its eye-catching cover notwithstanding. The author presents this book as a radical departure from all other map books because...he shows more degrees of nuance I guess? I'm not sure exactly how it's supposed to be so radical. In any case, the book turns into a transcript of his intro to cartography class that he teaches at Yale. The author (or at least his presentation) can be a little smug. For example, he will frequently show a map, then show how he improved said map. He even does this once for a map that little kids sent him!

There are a lot of beautiful maps here, but also a lot of somewhat numbing cartographic history, obscure academic language, and smug Ivy-League editorializing.

[Yuleza Negron · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a challenging but fascinating read with captivating printed maps. the author does an amazing job breaking down complex topics in the field. The color chapter blew my mind. I’ll never look at maps the same way again. A must-read for anyone interested in history, social history, the relationship between geography and society, what maps reveal and conceal (either implicitly or explicitly), and more. It’s also a great coffee table book. Beautifully packaged.