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Picturing America: The Golden Age of Pictorial Maps
Instructive, amusing, colorful—pictorial maps have been used and admired since the first medieval cartographer put pen to paper depicting mountains and trees across countries, people and objects around margins, and sea monsters in oceans. More recent generations of pictorial map artists have continued that traditional mixture of whimsy and fact, combining cartographic elements with text and images and featuring bold and arresting designs, bright and cheerful colors, and lively detail. In the United States, the art form flourished from the 1920s through the 1970s, when thousands of innovative maps were mass-produced for use as advertisements and decorative objects—the golden age of American pictorial maps.
Picturing America is the first book to showcase this vivid and popular genre of maps. Geographer Stephen J. Hornsby gathers together 158 delightful pictorial jewels, most drawn from the extensive collections of the Library of Congress. In his informative introduction, Hornsby outlines the development of the cartographic form, identifies several representative artists, describes the process of creating a pictorial map, and considers the significance of the form in the history of Western cartography. Organized into six thematic sections, Picturing America covers a vast swath of the pictorial map tradition during its golden age, ranging from “Maps to Amuse” to “Maps for War.” Hornsby has unearthed the most fascinating and visually striking maps the United States has to Disney cartoon maps, college campus maps, kooky state tourism ads, World War II promotional posters, and many more. This remarkable, charming volume’s glorious full-color pictorial maps will be irresistible to any map lover or armchair traveler.
Picturing America is the first book to showcase this vivid and popular genre of maps. Geographer Stephen J. Hornsby gathers together 158 delightful pictorial jewels, most drawn from the extensive collections of the Library of Congress. In his informative introduction, Hornsby outlines the development of the cartographic form, identifies several representative artists, describes the process of creating a pictorial map, and considers the significance of the form in the history of Western cartography. Organized into six thematic sections, Picturing America covers a vast swath of the pictorial map tradition during its golden age, ranging from “Maps to Amuse” to “Maps for War.” Hornsby has unearthed the most fascinating and visually striking maps the United States has to Disney cartoon maps, college campus maps, kooky state tourism ads, World War II promotional posters, and many more. This remarkable, charming volume’s glorious full-color pictorial maps will be irresistible to any map lover or armchair traveler.
304 pages, Hardcover
Published March 23, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 26, 2017
I was a bit disappointed in the size of the maps. I think the publication could have been better. Especially considering it was focusing on the maps themselves. I first heard about it from an article on Mental Floss (http://mentalfloss.com/photos/94417/9...) and the images included there were fantastic. So you can understand my disappointment when I found the same images in the book at a fraction of the size and even unreadable with a magnifying glass. The one highlight of a map that was easy to read was the Dewey Decimal Map of the United States. Which, working in a library, spoke to me.
browsed
March 25, 2017From Library of Congress blog: http://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2017/03/new-...
"Designed to educate, amuse or advertise, pictorial maps were a clever and colorful component of print culture in the mid-20th century, often overlooked in studies of cartography. A new book published by the Library of Congress in association with the University of Chicago Press, “Picturing America: The Golden Age of Pictorial Maps,” by Stephen J. Hornsby, celebrates these vibrant maps, tracing their development and proliferation.
Jacket design by Lauren Michelle Smith
Cartographers have long incorporated illustrations into their maps, drawing mountains, cities and even sea monsters on maps, looking back at some medieval examples. Hornsby demonstrates how 20th-century artists adapted this tradition, encouraged by improvements in print technology and inspired by trends in advertising, graphic design and popular culture.
More than 150 maps, most drawn from the Library of Congress’ Geography and Map Division, are illustrated in six thematic chapters. “Maps to Amuse” includes satirical works like “A New Yorker’s Idea of the United States of America” (1935), while “Maps to Instruct” shows such maps as “A Pictorial Chart of American Literature” (1932), marking the residences of famous American authors. Regional tourism ads, World War II posters and maps of colonial America are just a few of the many types of maps encountered in this volume.
The New York Times calls the book “beautifully illustrated” and notes that it documents the golden age of pictorial maps from the 1920s to the 1970s. It includes the playful (distorted views of the country from the perspective of New Yorkers, Texans and Californians); the obscure (a map of volunteer fire departments in Philadelphia, circa 1792, commissioned and drawn in 1938); and more of the obscure (a map of Michigan bakeries).
“Picturing America” shows how midcentury mapmakers paired vivid illustrations with educational information, entrepreneurial spirit and humor to create lively pictorial maps that are as entertaining to today’s readers as they were to their original audiences.
Stephen J. Hornsby is director of the Canadian-American Center at the University of Maine and a professor of geography and Canadian studies. He is the author and co-editor of several books, including the prize-winning “Historical Atlas of Maine.”
“Picturing America” is a 304-page hardcover book including more than 150 color illustrations. It is available for $45 in the Library of Congress Shop, 10 First St. SE, Washington, DC, 20540-4985. Credit-card orders are taken at (888) 682-3557 or online.
"Designed to educate, amuse or advertise, pictorial maps were a clever and colorful component of print culture in the mid-20th century, often overlooked in studies of cartography. A new book published by the Library of Congress in association with the University of Chicago Press, “Picturing America: The Golden Age of Pictorial Maps,” by Stephen J. Hornsby, celebrates these vibrant maps, tracing their development and proliferation.
Jacket design by Lauren Michelle Smith
Cartographers have long incorporated illustrations into their maps, drawing mountains, cities and even sea monsters on maps, looking back at some medieval examples. Hornsby demonstrates how 20th-century artists adapted this tradition, encouraged by improvements in print technology and inspired by trends in advertising, graphic design and popular culture.
More than 150 maps, most drawn from the Library of Congress’ Geography and Map Division, are illustrated in six thematic chapters. “Maps to Amuse” includes satirical works like “A New Yorker’s Idea of the United States of America” (1935), while “Maps to Instruct” shows such maps as “A Pictorial Chart of American Literature” (1932), marking the residences of famous American authors. Regional tourism ads, World War II posters and maps of colonial America are just a few of the many types of maps encountered in this volume.
The New York Times calls the book “beautifully illustrated” and notes that it documents the golden age of pictorial maps from the 1920s to the 1970s. It includes the playful (distorted views of the country from the perspective of New Yorkers, Texans and Californians); the obscure (a map of volunteer fire departments in Philadelphia, circa 1792, commissioned and drawn in 1938); and more of the obscure (a map of Michigan bakeries).
“Picturing America” shows how midcentury mapmakers paired vivid illustrations with educational information, entrepreneurial spirit and humor to create lively pictorial maps that are as entertaining to today’s readers as they were to their original audiences.
Stephen J. Hornsby is director of the Canadian-American Center at the University of Maine and a professor of geography and Canadian studies. He is the author and co-editor of several books, including the prize-winning “Historical Atlas of Maine.”
“Picturing America” is a 304-page hardcover book including more than 150 color illustrations. It is available for $45 in the Library of Congress Shop, 10 First St. SE, Washington, DC, 20540-4985. Credit-card orders are taken at (888) 682-3557 or online.
July 20, 2017
Gorgeous maps with enough commentary to satify the most curious map lover. However, some of the maps were too small - or ended up in the crease - so unique details were lost.
March 31, 2021
Really enjoyed the concept of these maps. I love looking at period pieces like these. However, it was very hard to see detail in most. Most were unnecessarily shrunk too small. They were either extremely difficult or impossible to read given how small they were. I think most of the maps should have been given two full pages in order to allow the reader to appreciate the detail or even read what’s on the map.
June 21, 2026
Great stuff
July 30, 2017
As a map buff I thought this was a great book in terms of how the history of pictorial maps was presented and in the various subject orientated chapters used to present the content. Yay for the librarians who had the sense to preserve these maps and in the process created these wonderful collections. I was VERY disappointed in the chintzy approach to re-producing the maps in the volume. In many instances a single map would be presented on a page in a portrait orientation at so small a scale it was nearly impossible to actually read the images or designs that the map description provided. Had the map image been flipped to landscape, centered and enlarged to fill the entire page it would have been far more satisfactory and informative. As they were presented in so crimped a manner what was really a good book on an interesting subject became just an okay book poorly presented. Still, the background text for each map as well as the longer introduction about the creators and collectors is worth the time for any map fan but don’t get your hopes up and think that you will actually be able to see all the maps re-produced in any detail. It seems the publisher took the cheap way out.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews