Mapping Boston

The format is approximately 12 inches by 11.5 inches. xiv, 278 pages. Illustrations (some in color). Maps (some in color). Timeline of Boston's Land Making. A Boston chronology. A Glossary of Map Terms. For Further Reading. An Index of the Maps Illustrations. Index. Cover has slight wear and lower corner curling. Illustrated covers. Contributing essays by David Bosse, James Carroll, Dvid Cobb, Alex Krieger, Barbara McCorkle, Nancy S. Seasholes, and Sam Bass Warner, Jr. Vignettes accompanying the plates by Anne Macklin. Alex Krieger, FAIA, has combined a career of teaching and practice. Mr. Krieger is Professor in Practice of Urban Design, Emeritus at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He served as Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design (1998-2004, 2006-2007, 2019-2020), Director of the Urban Design Program (1990-2001), and as Associate Chair of the Department of Architecture (1984-1989). Since 1984, he has provided architecture, urban design, and urban planning services to clients in numerous cities worldwide, focusing primarily on educational, institutional, healthcare, and public projects. He is a board member for the Boston Public Library’s Norman B. Leventhal Map and Education Center. Mr. Krieger received a Master of City Planning in Urban Design from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Major publications include: City on a Hill: Urban Idealism in America from the Puritans to the Present (Harvard University Press, 2019); and Mapping Boston (with David Cobb and Amy Turner, MIT Press, 1999). An informative, and beautiful, exploration of the life and history of a city through its maps. To the attentive user even the simplest map can reveal not only where things are but how people perceive and imagine the spaces they occupy. Mapping Boston is an exemplar of such creative attentiveness, bringing the history of one of America's oldest and most beautiful cities alive through the maps that have depicted it over the centuries. The book includes both historical maps of the city and maps showing the gradual emergence of the New England region from the imaginations of explorers to a form that we would recognize today. Each map is accompanied by a full description and by a short essay offering an insight into its context. The topics of these essays by Anne Mackin include people both familiar and unknown, landmarks, and events that were significant in shaping the landscape or life of the city. A highlight of the book is a series of new maps detailing Boston's growth. The book also contains seven essays that explore the intertwining of maps and history. Urban historian Sam Bass Warner, Jr., starts with a capsule history of Boston. Barbara McCorkle, David Bosse, and David Cobb discuss the making and trading of maps from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Historian Nancy S. Seasholes reviews the city's remarkable topographic history as reflected in maps, and planner Alex Krieger explores the relation between maps and the physical reality of the city as experienced by residents and visitors. In an epilogue, novelist James Carroll ponders the place of Boston in contemporary culture and the interior maps we carry of a city. First MIT Press Paperback Edition [stated]. Presumed first printing thus.…