The Map Room

The Map Room is a blog about maps by Jonathan Crowe. It was published between March 2003 and June 2011, and covered everything from antique map collecting to the latest in geospatial technology. The Map Room came to an end on June 30, 2011, but you can still browse more than 4,000 entries in the archives. I also still post occasionally to The Map Room’s Twitter and Facebook pages.

I haven’t given up on maps: I make an occasional blog post about them on my personal blog: see the Maps category; the most recent entries are below. I’m also working on several map-related projects, including research into the use of maps in fantasy and science fiction.

The Measure of Manhattan

December 20, 2012 • Another mapmaker is getting a book-length biography. The Measure of Manhattan, Marguerite Holloway’s biography of surveyor John Randel, Jr. (1787-1865), whose decade-long survey of the island of Manhattan was the basis for that city’s street grid, comes out in… Read more →

Google Maps for iPhone

December 13, 2012 • As announced by AllThingsD shortly before it happened, Google Maps for iPhone was released last night. If you rely on Google’s extensive local search database, Street View or transit directions, downloading this app is a no-brainer. You will say, “At… Read more →

Antony Swithin’s Rockall

December 12, 2012 • Antony Swithin’s Rockall is another one of those imagined places whose creators have spent decades of their lives imagining. In this case, Swithin, the pen name of the late University of Saskatchewan geology professor William Sarjeant (1935-2002), placed his imagined… Read more →

Review: The Lands of Ice and Fire

November 29, 2012 • The Lands of Ice and Fire, which came out last month, is a collection of maps of the lands of George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, executed by the fantasy cartographer Jonathan Roberts. You should… Read more →

Jeffrey Beebe’s Refractoria

November 28, 2012 • Jeffrey Beebe operates in the same space as Jerry Gretzinger or Austin Tappan Wright. “Over the last fifteen years, I have created the world of Refractoria, a comprehensive imagino-ordinary world that is equal parts autobiography and pure fantasy.” The… Read more →

Let Maps to Others

November 28, 2012 • K. J. Parker’s “Let Maps to Others,” a novella published in Subterranean, deals with themes of interest to those of us interested in maps in fantasy fiction, though it’s not a map story per se. The story deals with the… Read more →

Older entries →

• OpenStreetMap (Ramm, Topf and Chilton)
  (Reviewed on June 1, 2011)
• Infinite City
  (Reviewed on April 28, 2011)
• Maps in Comics: In Maps & Legends
  (Reviewed on February 15, 2011)
• National Geographic Atlas of the World, Ninth Edition
  (Reviewed on November 22, 2010)
• From Here to There
  (Reviewed on October 26, 2010)
• The Power of Place
  (Reviewed on March 16, 2010)
• The Fourth Part of the World
  (Reviewed on December 7, 2009)
• Paris Underground
  (Reviewed on November 24, 2009)
• Map Addict
  (Reviewed on October 7, 2009)
• Two Inexpensive Star Atlases
  (Reviewed on February 20, 2009)
• Cartography Design Annual #1
  (Reviewed on September 15, 2008)
• Rhumb Lines and Map Wars
  (Reviewed on July 22, 2008)
• Lost States
  (Reviewed on July 15, 2008)
• Transit Maps of the World
  (Reviewed on March 5, 2008)
• Canada Back Road Atlas
  (Reviewed on February 15, 2008)
• Longitude
  (Reviewed on January 22, 2008)
• Our Dumb World
  (Reviewed on January 14, 2008)
• The Geist Atlas of Canada
  (Reviewed on November 20, 2006)
• From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow
  (Reviewed on July 26, 2006)
• Seeing Through Maps
  (Reviewed on July 25, 2006)
• How to Lie with Maps
  (Reviewed on May 29, 2006)
• Walking with Your Ancestors by Melinda Kashuba
  (Reviewed on May 8, 2006)
• Making Maps by Krygier and Wood
  (Reviewed on March 29, 2006)
• GPS Mapping by Rich Owings
  (Reviewed on February 10, 2006)