Seeing Through Maps: The Power of Images to Shape Our World View

Maps become a means of seeing the world from many perspectives in this appealing guide, which is aimed at training readers to look at images with a critical eye. The authors (a social scientist and a pastor/community organizer) challenge readers to stretch their intellectual boundaries while they wrap their minds around demonstrations of the many ways of making maps and the truth that no way is "the right one." A final chapter provides a guide to using map projections in human resource development and adult education. It's a smart book but not a beautiful one many of the illustrations went muddy in the transfer from color to b&w, and seven unlovely pages of the publisher's advertising precede the index. Wide format: 11x8.5<">. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Ward Kaiser has been a publisher, ecumenical executive, pastor, teacher, and community organizer. He introduced the Peters Projection world map to North America, publishing its first English-language version in 1983. His handbook to that map, A New View of the World, "the most effective piece of writing that has come out concerning the Peters Projection," is widely used by educators and social activists.

National Public Radio, NBC-TV, CBC-Radio and -Television as well as many local media outlets in Canada and the United States have had Kaiser as a guest. He has lectured extensively at colleges and universities and led worldview workshops and professional development seminars. He has translated several works in cartography into English. Even while "retired," he maintains a busy schedule of lecturing and writing. He may be reached at newmapper@aol.com.

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Featured on Ira Glass's This American Life, Denis Wood is one of America's best-loved experts on the significance and meaning of maps. Wood loves maps and loves to talk about them. Besides Seeing Through Maps, Wood is the author of the best-selling The Power of Maps. He also curated the award-winning exhibition of maps at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in 1992, and its even more popular incarnation at the Smithsonian in Washington the year after.

A writer/artist, Wood is also a social scientist. He has published over 60 articles in a variety of journals that ranges from Industrialization Forum to The Journal of Environmental Psychology. During the '70s, Wood co-authored the best-selling World Geography Today, and in the '90s the respected Home Rules. His Five Billion Years of Global Change will be published by Guilford Press.

Dr. Wood earned his Ph.D. and Masters in geography from Clark University, among the most highly regarded geography programs in the country. His undergraduate degree, in English, is from Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, where Wood grew up. From 1996 to 1998 Wood served two years in prison. Wood's book about that experience, Soft Time in a Hard Place, was commissioned by John Hopkins University Press. It will be published in 2002.

He has lectured around the world. In 1995 he keynoted the annual meeting of the North American Cartographic Information Society. His consulting clients have ranged from Esselte Map Services and Maple Lake Sports Camps to Merrill Lynch and Manufacturers Hanover Trust .