In Early American Cartographies, editor Martin Brückner has gathered together a baker’s dozen of interdisciplinary articles designed to examine “a cartographic history that is anchored in the Americas” (p. 6), i.e. not just treat the exploration, geographies, and maps of the New World as adjuncts of European cartography. Fully ensconced in tradition of the “cartographic turn” pioneered by J. B. Harley and his cohorts, these essays embrace “alternate notions of cartography” (p. 6) and treat “maps as polyvalent genetic texts” (p. 7). Thus there are discussions of allegorical maps, an Amerindian star chart, plans in British magazines, and even the Herman Melville novella Benito Cereno.

Early American Cartographies is a dense tome and, despite Brückner’s attempt to provide an overarching theme connecting them all in his introduction, the articles here are rather far-ranging in time, geography, and scope, and the writers all have divergent topics, styles, and methodologies. Still, Early American Cartographies, while not always fulfilling Brückner’s promise to focus on “a cartographic history that is anchored in the Americas” (some essays describe a transatlantic world rather than a simply American one), will interest specialists and generalists alike and provide new ways of looking at aspects of the cartographic encounter in the New World. ( )