Editorial Review:
This volume ventures into terrain where even the most sophisticated map fails to lead--through the mapmaker's bias. Denis Wood shows how maps are not impartial reference objects, but rather instruments of communication, persuasion, and power. Like paintings, they express a point of view. By connecting us to a reality that could not exist in the absence of maps--a world of property lines and voting rights, taxation districts and enterprise zones--they embody and project the interests of their creators. Sampling the scope of maps available today, illustrations include Peter Gould's AIDS map, Tom Van Sant's map of the earth, U.S. Geological Survey maps, and a child's drawing of the world. THE POWER OF MAPS was published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt Museum, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Design.
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Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 
Power of Maps is powerful  2008-06-26
I read Wood's The Power of Maps a few years ago, and I've just come back to it. It is not light reading (although it's well written and a pleasure to read), and it isn't just about cartography. It is about the ways in which we use symbols to reflect our world's biases, power structures, hopes, fears and more. Maps are forms of cultural language, and Wood does not shrink from pulling the curtain away from the fact that they are also often arbitrary, manipulative, and simply wrong. At the same time, he celebrates them, and he encourages readers to come to maps with their critical antennae raised. So, maps can tell us much more about our world than most people realize. This is real scholarship, and it is intellectually rigorous, but it is also accessible, relevant and rich in content. It's a wonderful book.
Somebody get this man an editor! Quick!  2006-11-07
I bought Wood's more recent book on maps (Seeing Through Maps: Many Ways to See the World) through amazon, and was somewhat disappointed (see my review there). So, this time around, I decided to get this book from my public library (yay for public libraries!). Boy am I glad I did! (Because I would have kicked myself if I had paid money for this one.) It appears that this book was later condensed to provide much of the material for "Seeing Through Maps...".
I can agree with most of what other reviewers have said about this book: The Ferris-Bueller moments (what an apt description!) caused by excessive use of ellipsis, the use of drawings by a three-year-old (literally) on many pages, the post-modernist over-intellectualized ramblings that tend to detract from what are perfectly valid and interesting points: the people in power really *do* draw the maps, and maps *do* give some people power (and take it away from others) by manipulating our conception of the world.
It's too bad that someone didn't reign the author in, in both of those books. He's really his own worst enemy. The writing is rambling and repetitive: you find yourself muttering "OK! OK! I *get* it! Can we move ON please!". With apologies to Blaise Pascal, it seems if the author had had more time, he could have written a shorter book.
I think it's really a shame that both books lack even a single colour plate, since maps possess beauty in addition to power, but perhaps it was appropriate to de-emphasize the beauty and focus on the power for the purposes of this book. Prospective readers should know that the "power" referred to in the title is of an ethereal, intellectual kind, that is perceived in the mind, not in the eyes.
Excellent Writing, Profound Insights 2004-09-07
This is one of those books that come around all too infrequently that make us see the world differently. Those content with a limited view may not fully appreciate the depth of this book's insights. The prose simply soars beyond what one would expect from an academic subject...which makes it thrilling to read. Denis Wood's are not for the lazy or the closed-minded. They are, indeed, masterful.
Poor writing, shallow thinking  2003-05-09
For those who simply like maps, here is a quick response to "The Power of Maps": DO NOT bother reading this book! The writing is poor. The book is riddled with errors (the chapter on Tom Van Sant's beautiful, global satellite image map is particularly bad in this regard). Very few actual maps are included, and they are reprinted in an ugly, unreadable small black & white format. Worst of all, the author doesn't really have anything to say about the power OR beauty of maps, or about what makes a map elegant, eloquent, or useful. Like so many ivory-tower deconstructionists, Wood's primary focus seems to be on the manipulation of language as a weapon against his own subject - in this case, cartography. As one who loves maps, and works with them professionally, I wouldn't have thought it would be possible to write about them in such an insipid, uninteresting, and unenlightening way. Don't waste your time or your money on this book!
... the heights! 2002-05-12
If you want the history of cartography or an explanation of its technicalities, this is not the book for you. If you want to see more clearly the human landscape in which maps are embedded and the human activities for which maps are constructed, this IS the book for you! Brilliant and fun and informative reading for cartographers and laymen. Denis Wood shows how maps represent societies as much as topographies. Grab your topo for rafting trip through time and place!
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