Geographical Reviews

GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS YOUR PRIVATE SKY R. Buckminster Fuller, The Art of Design Science. Edited by JOACHIM KRAUSSE and CLAUDE LICHTENSTEIN. Translated by STEVEN LINDBERG and JULIA THORSON. 528 pp.; maps, diagrs., ills., bibliog. Baden, Switzerland: Lars Muller Publishers, 1999. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 3907044886. The problem with any book about R. Buckminster Fuller’s life is simply fitting it all in. Engineer, architect, sailor, technical editor, businessman, inventor, cartographer, visionary-these are only a few of the forty-three terms used by an earlier author to describe Fuller. Doing justice to such a life within the 500+ pages of this beautifully manufactured book required making some difficult choices. The title, Your Private Sky, comes from Fuller’s habit of saying that the sky under which he stood was his sky and encouraging others to do the same. He also argued against the terms “sunset)’ and “sunrise,” instead offering the neologisms “sunclipse” and “sunsight.” He thought, quite reasonably, that we should look at the night sky and try to sense the earth moving under our feet rather than the stars moving across the sky. A book on design science by arguably the most inventive designer of the twen- tieth century demands copious illustration. The editors did not shirk this responsi- bility, and illustrative material occupies well over half the book. In addition to many wonderful drawings and preliminary sketches from Fuller himself, there are numerous charming photographs from family albums and from Fuller’s time in the U.S. Navy. Some of my favorites are those of Fuller as an actor in productions at Black Mountain College (1948)) with Merce Cunningham and Elaine de Kooning, under the direction of John Cage. One wonders whether such direct involvement with performing art- ists would ever be found in the biographies of other giants of twentieth-century architecture, such as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, or Frank Lloyd Wright. The graphic richness of Your Private Sky did, however, require significant typo- graphic compromises in the presentation of the text. At first glance I was put off by the stark functionalism of the sans serif typeface in the editors’ introduction. It was as if the book had been produced at the Bauhaus during the 1920s, when the typo- graphic compatriots of Gropius and Moholy-Nagy rose up in successful revolt against the Black Letter Gothic that had been used in German books for centuries. How- ever necessary and successful that movement, there is a general consensus today that Times Roman and Century Schoolbook are more readable than Helvetica or Univers. It was therefore a relief to realize that the sans serif is a signature type for editorial commentary; the considerable writings of Fuller himself appear in more readable typefaces. In both cases, however, the type hardly exceeds 9 points in size, and lengthy captions and explanations appear in even smaller fonts. Readers should be prepared for a visual feast of images but an alphanumeric challenge in textual presentation. When a photograph occupies only half of the The Geographical Review 91 (3): 597-616, July zoo1 Copyright 0 2002 by the American Geographical Society of New York 598 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW page, the type typically overlays a colored ink. This provides dramatic, though per- haps overdone, emphasis, but in more than one case gray type overlays a light ma- roon or fuchsia page. Here one encounters an all-too-familiar case of an “art director gone wild,” much to the detriment of readability. Having broached such complaints, my final judgment must be, “It’s all quite worth it!” Buckminster Fuller’s text, selected from what had to be encyclopedic vol- umes, provides a treasury of insights into the evolution of his thinking, however tortured his syntax becomes at times. Here is an example from a letter to his sister Rosamund before her departure to Europe. He is writing about their great-aunt, Margaret Fuller: “She was well known abroad too, having been received by Carlisle in England, as the head of a Deputation from Emerson; and done heroic work in Italy, while her husband Marchese Ossili fought in the civil war there, just before their final return to this country, on the voyage which ended in their being ship- wrecked and drowned off Fire Island, L.I., where the Women’s Clubs of America erected a memorial to her” (p. 74). What is a mere seventy-three-word sentence in a personal letter?-only a pass- ing effort for someone who was probably the most prolific twentieth-century writer in the architect/engineer fraternity. The “Selected Bibliography” lists twenty-three titles under“Books by RBF.” In 1915, at about the time he was expelled from Harvard, Fuller began keeping what became known as his Dyrnuxion Chronofile. Part diary and part technical and idea notebook, it was assembled in 1930 as thirty or so leather- bound volumes. Fuller’s writings are typically strewn with neologisms, often con- catenated in ways that challenge us to look at the world from a new and different perspective. Consider a 1928 prophecy of Fuller’s: “In our individual homes no matter where we may be we can speak into our combination radio-telephonic-recording- dictator recording our commands graphically (word or picture) to our machines which will involve only real thinking and study of statistics by the directors of in- dustries machines” (p. 106). This vision is not far removed from the computer- monitored controls being installed in homes today, but it is difficult to imagine acceptance by readers in 1928. Prior to the summer of 1955, Fuller spoke at the University of Wisconsin in Madi- son. The auditorium was small enough for him to wander around the stage and still make himself heard. Combinations of ideas and juxtapositions of words poured forth without hesitation or repetition, just as they appear on the printed page. He was sixty years old at that time, but his energy was “nonstop.” One had the feeling that ideas were simply streaming out. That same year Frank Lloyd Wright had made one of his rare appearances on the campus, traveling from Taliesin East, some 3 0 miles west of Madison. The edi- tors of Your Privute Sky describe Wright as a sympathizer of Fuller some 25 years earlier, when Fuller took over publishing the journal T-Square, changed its name to Shelter, and turned it into a truly innovative publication. On the public platform, however, their speaking styles could hardly be in greater contrast. Wright, the grand old man of American avant-garde architecture at 88, was magisterial in style and GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS 599 still very much possessed of an acerbic wit. In his signature cape and pork-pie hat, he was definitely concerned with his public appearance. Fuller, by contrast, was much too exuberant and undisciplined in the expression of his ideas to show much concern for his public appearance. During his Greenwich Village years he described himself this way: Then people started getting interested in my Dymaxion House, very nice people with influence, and they’d say, “I’d like to give a dinner party for you” and so forth. I would show up in khaki pants and they’d be very shocked. . . and I said [to myself], “You’re not allowed to do that. You must get over that. . . . So I decided the way to do that was to become the invisible man, and that means a bank clerk-so I put on a black suit, bank clerk‘s clothing; then they would focus on what I was saying instead of my eccentricities. I said, “I must get rid of continually making too much of my- self.” (p. 148) Like Wright, Fuller was well into middle age before his published books became a significant source of income. In the 1920s publishers considered his theoretical writ- ings unintelligible and unreadable. Charles Scribner’s Sons considered publishing a book based on stenographic notes of a Fuller lecture, but nothing came of it, as did their attempt to hire Lewis Mumford as a collaborator or ghost writer. Throughout his life Fuller was, however, a great success at writing patent appli- cations. He was attentive to the recording of his ideas in a form that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office would accept. A peculiarity of the copyright law at this time led Fuller to initiate a procedure that would earn him the title of “inventor of desk- top publishing.” In the late 1920s copyright was not simply claimed with the ap- pearance of the copyright symbol and the registration of one’s work with the Library of Congress; it was binding only when it could be shown that 200 copies of a work had been sent out, and proof was required that the addressees had, in fact, received their copies. So Fuller self-published his first book manuscript (his 4D Book) by mimeograph and illustrated it himself. His illustrations must have been accom- plished using some kind of stylus on the mimeograph masters. According to the editors of Your Private Sky, he sent “the printed 4D books to family members, friends, acquaintances, and prominent members of society and their intermediaries. In this way he hoped to make his multifaceted manuscript familiar to Henry Ford, Bertrand Russell, Le Corbusier, Christopher Morley, among others, but also to publishers, university presidents, manufacturers and architects” (p. 120). Geographers who read Your Private Sky will no doubt find the story of the evo- lution of Fuller’s Dymaxion World Map of interest-a map used to considerable effect in some turn-of-the-millennium human geography textbooks. That story begins in the 1930s with Fuller’s inventory of world resources for the editors of Fortune Magazine. During World War I1 he was the head engineer on the Board of Economic Warfare. At the beginning of the war he believed that the Mercator pro- jection led to a particularly dangerous gap between that mental picture of the world and the world of reality as defined by air travel and the “blitzkrieg” technology of 600 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW warfare. How these issues led Fuller to his Dymaxion projection are considered in some detail in Your Private Sky. The book would have been improved by a number of additions, particularly a name and subject index. The inclusion of Fuller’s ideas on the global distribution of electrical energy would also have been appropriate, because they are now being pursued by the San Diego group GENI (Global Energy Network International). Fuller became aware that electrical energy could be transmitted across two time zones (or “wheeled,” as managers of electrical grids term it). This means that when the sun- light has diminished in New York consumers there can use the excess of power in Colorado through intermediary grid connections. Expanding on this notion, Fuller realized that a power grid connecting Alaska with Siberia would make possible a global power grid and the “wheeling of electrical energy anywhere in the world. Some island hopping would be necessary across the Indonesian archipelago to con- nect Australia, but that is not an engineering impossibility. On Fuller’s Dymaxion projection the land area of the earth is readily viewed as a single interlocked chain of continents. Fuller further suggested that with such a power grid we could make the kilowatt hour the basic unit of a world currency. This would render currency the domain of physicists and engineers, removing it from the machinations of politicians and na- tional economic interests. Fuller argued that there can be no world shortage of en- ergy according to the First Law of Thermodynamics (energy is neither created nor destroyed). His followers at G E N I would concur, arguing that our problem is one of distribution-one that could be solved with a global power grid. In conclusion, Your Private Sky contains a wealth of Buckminster Fuller’s ideas that continue to call for consideration by the world’s problem solvers. A second volume, subtitled “Discourse,” is more recently in print. But this first volume alone presents ideas in a compelling biographical scheme that helps us understand their creation and evo~ution.-~oHN MARTINSON, University of Nevada, Reno PRINCE HENRY ‘THE NAVIGATOR’: A Life. By PETER RUSSELL. xvi and 448 pp.; maps, ills., bibliog., index. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000. $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 0300082339. On the jacket of this new biography the familiar face of Prince Henry greets us in a portrait that can claim no clear authenticity for its presumed subject. The single quotation marks in the title, Prince Henry ‘The Navigator’: A L$e, announce both the fragility of the popular view of the historical figure, now about to be dismantled, and the fact that a new one, on a more certain evidentiary basis, is to be constructed. But there is no ambiguity as to the credentials of the author, who has been publish- ing ground-breaking studies on the person and world of the great Portuguese prince for the past thirty years. Through a sure command of the sources and an enviable ability to read them critically, Peter Russell provides us with a convincing recon- GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS 601 struction not only of this important figure but also of the late medieval world, of Portuguese life and culture, and of opening up the African Atlantic. The sources for charting such a career are scattered. Except for a single surviv- ing letter, Henry, who was born in 1394 and died in 1460, left no correspondence. But there are position papers and relevant documentation provided by the fifteen volumes of the Monurnenta Henricina (1960-), as well as archival sources, which Russell employs to advantage. Of the many chronicles, the most famous, by Gomes Eanes de Zurara, is used with caution most effectively. In contrast, Russell finds the Venetian Cadamosto’s Le navigazioni atlan tiche (1966) to be essentially reliable. Long familiarity with these materials allows Russell to give the most compelling as well as trustworthy account of Prince Henry and his discoveries that can be expected. In this effort to attain a more historical understanding of the subject, given the nonexistence of the all-too-famous navigation school at Sagres, the charac- ter of the great navigator presents the most immediate challenge and its under- standing the most fundamental accomplishment. Russell takes seriously the horoscope, as apparently did Henry himself, cast for the prince at his birth. The main planetary influences on his career would be those of Mars and Saturn, which supposedly predestined him to the making of “great and noble conquests and to the uncovering of secrets previously hidden from men” (p. 15). The times and the environment would reinforce this belief, further accentuated by the prince’s adoption of a motto that meant “a hunger to perform worthy deeds” (p. 23). He would early choose the French crusader Louis IX as his personal saint. But com- plexity arose in this calling as the Crusades expanded to include all pagans and infidels, not just Muslims, and permitted the enslavement of sub-Saharan blacks. Through Henry’s own instrumentality, African slaves were to be directly accessible by means of coastal navigation and discovery. The justification for such discovery, conquest, and enslavement lay with Christianization, for Henry claimed that he acquired slaves in order to convert them to Christianity. He exploited the theory of the pope as lord spiritual and territorial of the world, by whose approval he could proceed to conquer all lands without Christians. Despite the narrow alignment of Christian conversion with Henry’s exploitation of the slave trade, however, the prince could not claim to have established a single church or chapel south of Morocco. Yet, equipped with his license from the papacy, he led successive popes to believe that the evangelization of Black Africa was proceeding on schedule. Not that Henry was a hypocrite: He appar- ently saw no contradiction in his crusading/exploring/evangelizing/enslaving effort. Internal contradictions in Henry’s complex personality abound. He was a shrewd manipulator of opinion at the court of Portugal, with the pope, and with Europe at large, yet he was also alarmingly rash, as evinced by his repeated ventures of con- quest against Morocco. We are told that “whenever the Prince switched himself into his crusading mode, common sense no longer ruled his thinking” (p. 190). Mo- rocco had somehow become identified with his historical destiny and religious in- stincts. Henry was a creature of many obsessions: the conquest of Morocco, the 602 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW displacement of Castile in the Christian recovery of Granada, and the conquest of the Canary Islands. Repeated efforts in all three endeavors led to repeated embar- rassment for himself and for Portugal. Yet there was his effective colonization of Madeira, with its successful development of the sugar and wine industries, as well as his better-known ventures into the South Atlantic and to Black Africa. Among the position papers of 1432 treating the question of Morocco’s conquest, Henry’s own of 1436 is found to be rambling and incoherent. How can we identify such miscalculations with the shrewd planner and organizer of oceanic discovery? Russell implies that within his expanded household-a veritable state within the state- something about the prince managed to attract and hold together a number of talented persons. Ultimately, however, their precise mode of coherence among many profound contradictions escapes the best efforts of the author. At the beginning of Prince Henry’s career stands the taking of Ceuta, in 1415. For Henry, the immediate significance proved to be less military than logistical, for he was charged with provisioning this awkwardly advanced foothold into Muslim ter- ritory. But the crusader turned into an administrator, and out of his household emerged the Casa de Ceuta for this task. Henry’s responsibility for its operation would provide the base for future ventures of discovery and enterprise. His house- hold had its economic and political roots in the domainal lands of Portugal’s most prominent prince, the revenues of the military-religious Order of Christ (confis- cated by the Crown in 1420 for the prince’s use), and a bundle of privileges and monopolies ceded by the Crown to Henry. The resources of this household would be further enhanced by the slave trade, as well as by a cavalier attitude toward debt stemming from the ethos of medieval chivalry. When he was not disastrously dis- tracted by some Moroccan crusading enterprise, Henry presided over a system that attracted talented men, such as the Venetian navigator Cadamosto; rather than pro- viding any schooling to others, the prince was the recipient of their information. Such an establishment would allow Henry to pursue ventures that previous princes had not attempted. Impelled more by a desire for personal fame and economic opportunities than by any sense of scientific inquiry or even curiosity, Henry now united the will with the means to venture into the Atlantic. His first consultation of maps in the 1420s directed him to the Canary Islands and Madeira, but eventually he turned his atten- tion to the goldfields and to what lay south of Cape Bojador. Of principal concern here are the source and nature of the inspiration that would allow Prince Henry’s ships to venture southward beyond the notorious cape, as one did in 1434. It is possible that his consultation of a French chronicle would have revealed that he was not the first to consider using his position in the Canary Islands to reconnoiter the West African coast. His suspicions would have been further en- couraged by the cartographic evidence available to him: at least one map in the Majorcan tradition identified a “Western Nile” as the Gold River (Rio de Oro), off the sub-Saharan coast. Cartography, according to Russell, claimed the prince’s at- tention and interest. GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS 603 With the “Cape of No Return” rounded, the fateful progress of the Portuguese down the west coast of Africa had begun. Some of the features that would later mark the Portuguese Empire appeared: the castle at Arguin, the fortified trading factories, the monopoly granted by the regent to Henry in 1443 allowing him to claim the Crown’s customary fifth on slaves and gold and tenth from all merchants south of Bojador. The Senegal was discovered and entered in about 1448. In the last decade of the prince’s life the Pole Star hung low on the northern horizon, where, at the mouth of the Gambia River, Cadamosto first saw the Southern Cross in 1455. Fifteen years after Henry’s death Portuguese enterprise reached the Mina, or Gold Coast. Especially noteworthy is Russell’s explication of the issue of the “just war” occa- sioned by the prince’s foolhardy ventures against the sultanate of Morocco. The resulting position papers of the leading courtiers rendered in 1432 reveal the low opinions of Henry’s ambitions, judgment, and military competence held by his peers. Of even greater interest is the discrepancy between the pope’s approval and the disapproval registered in consultus (advisory reports) rendered by two Bolognese canonists close to the pope, which rejected such a venture as unjust and denounced the legality of Henry’s project. But in trumpeting the universal temporal as well as spiritual authority of the pope to the pope’s advantage, Henry and Portuguese im- perialism would avail themselves of that authority for sanctioning their own enter- prise. Although Russell credits Henry with “undoubted interest in cartography” and with having consulted the available world maps and portolan charts before ventur- ing to Bojador and beyond, today’s geographers may well be disappointed in the book‘s scattered treatment of Henry’s scientific commitment. That treatment, how- ever, is commensurate with the prince’s slender nautical curiosity (p. n o ) . The great burst of Portuguese nautical science would follow shortly upon his death in 1460. A copy of the map by the Venetian Fra Mauro, which opened up Ptolemy’s lake of the Indian Ocean, would not arrive in Portugal until 1459. In an article on “The Alleged Nautical School Founded in the Fifteenth Century at Sagres by Prince Henry of Portugal, Called the ‘Navigator”’ (Imago Mundi 45 [1993]: 20-28), W. G. L. Randles made the important point that Bojador and subsequent Henrician achievements depended on traditional Mediterranean navigational techniques. Russell could afford to have been more emphatic here. He steers away from the seductive reefs of that apparition, the Sagres nautical school, and correctly questions all of the geographi- cal works credited to Henry by Damiiio de Gois and Joiio de Barros; indeed, Ptolemy’s Geography, available in Latin by 1410, never appears on Henry’s horizon (p. 6). Later, Russell significantly observes that Henry’s Indies, Indians, and Indian Ocean in- volved no rounding of any southern tip of the African continent but connoted phan- toms somewhere in northeastern Africa, where Prester John might be found (p. 121). Thus Poggio Bracciolini, representative of Italian Renaissance humanism, can laud Prince Henry not as an apostle of nautical sciences but as a bold promoter of geo- graphical discovery. This exiguous nature of the prince’s scientific endowment and 604 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW interest leads one to picture not so much Prince Henry “The Navigator” as Prince Henry “The Entrepreneurial Crusader.” In addition to illuminating Portugal and Europe on the eve of the great discov- eries, the book is a good read. Yale University Press is to be praised for its format and the generous as well as excellent illustrations it provided. -JOHN M. HEADLEY, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill SPEAKING THROUGH THE ASPENS: Basque Tree Carvings in California and Nevada. By J. MALLEA-OLAETXE. xiv and 237 pp.; map, diagrs., ills., bibliog., index. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2000. $39.95 (cloth), I S B N 0874173582. Basque sheepherders occupy a position at once legendary and marginalized in conventional western historiography: legendary as nomadic pastoralists but marginalized for their supposed incompatibility with cattle raising and ratio- nal-bureaucratic land management. The legends about sheepherding tend to outstrip the facts, drowning the scholar in half-truths and preconceptions while obscuring whatever solid data may exist. After more than a decade of research, J. Mallea-Olaetxe has produced a book that overcomes these obstacles, chal- lenging central components of both the fables and the conventional history. It is an important contribution for those who are interested in western pastoralism, and scholars in many fields stand to benefit from the methodological and epis- temological work that Mallea-Olaetxe has accomplished in gathering and inter- preting his extraordinary data. What significance can be attributed to names, dates, and figures carved into the bark of aspen trees? Thousands of such carvings dot the higher elevations of the intermountain West-Mallea-Olaetxe examined some 20,ooo-yet they have obvi- ous limitations as historical data. They are difficult to find, subject to natural and human-caused obliteration, and often only semilegible. The majority are little more than names or initials, with or without dates. Many of the more elaborate inscrip- tions are in Basque dialects unknown to previous researchers, and many of their referents are in Europe. Above all, the intentions behind them elude the casual ob- server. Should they be likened to petroglyphs, replete with cosmological and ar- chaeological meaning? Or to graffiti, scratched into a bathroom stall? Did they serve some functional purpose, or were they carved just to pass the time, a kind of wilder- ness doodling? Mallea-Olaetxe declines to impose any single interpretive frame, choosing in- stead to let the sheepherders “speak for themselves” through their carvings (p. 14). He stresses that the carvings were not intended to reach the eyes of nonherders, let alone those of the public at large. Basque pastoralists were unlikely to speak out in the dominant society, and their culture was traditionally transmitted orally. These factors make the “arborglyphs,” as Mallea-Olaetxe calls them, all the more valuable. Produced in the security of isolation, they amount to a rare sort of archive: “Each year new and veteran herders arriving in the high country added their names and GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS 605 stories to the earlier ones. The result is an amazing data bank of news directly re- lated to Basque immigration. This phenomenon, unique to the American West, is the legacy of hundreds of carvers and thousands of carvings, each herder con- tributing and adding a few pieces of information” (p. 13). In sum, the arborglyphs convey cultural, literary, historical, and archaeological meanings, albeit in a highly elliptical and perishable form. Interpreting them requires a tremendous amount of background research to understand the contexts in which they were pro- duced. Large surveys must also be conducted in order to discern patterns over space and time. Mallea-Olaetxe’s linguistic, historical, and cultural research is exemplary. He has generated lists of sheepherders’ names, linking individuals to particular mountain ranges in California and Nevada and back to regions, villages, or even farmsteads in the Basque country. Through countless interviews with current and former herd- ers and their families, on both sides of the Atlantic, he has pieced together plau- sible interpretations for many obscure images and opaque references. One learns -contrary to stereotypes-that most sheepherders arrived in America with little or no experience; they were not culturally disposed to nomadic pastoralism but were drawn into the business by a combination of economic compulsion, desire for adventure, and immigrant networking. The carvings also indicate that the sheepherders were not caught up in feuds with cattlemen, as legend would have it. Perhaps their bosses were, but the herders themselves were more concerned with forage conditions, obtaining provisions, and, above all, their isolation and loneliness. Mallea-Olaetxe suggests that most herders remained on peaceful terms with cowboys, sharing meals when their paths crossed. Their rivalries appear to have been with one another, focused on herding skills, pride in the homeland, or sexual prowess. It is impossible to evaluate the adequacy of Mallea-Olaetxe’s survey in any rig- orous way. He finds few pre-1890 carvings, but aspens seldom live for more than eighty years anyway. He knows that many have decayed, burned, or been cut down and that the ones he has found may or may not be representative of the entire “archive.” I often wished that he had tried to analyze his data more quantitatively. What kinds of distances did individual herders cover annually, or over the course of many years? How did herders’ careers vary across space and time? Are there any correlations with place of origin, or with changing economic conditions, either in the West or in the Basque homeland? He could also have examined the ecological effects and management practices of the herders. Mallea-Olaetxe does not take up these kinds of questions in any detail. Instead, he divides the carvings into topical groups and then proceeds, in a somewhat dated ethnographic fashion, to describe and interpret individual arborglyphs in order to reconstruct the experiences of the carvers. This approach sometimes seems too speculative or whimsical, and it can appear anachronistic or simplistic when Mallea- Olaetxe ventures a general statement such as, “If the carvings are naked, elemen- tary, incisive, and devoid of artifice, it follows that they can be used to explore the 606 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW Basque character’’ (p. 72). But the approach succeeds in portraying the lives of the herders in detail, and the aggregate effect is compelling. Upon finishing the book, moreover, one recognizes that although the data can- not support quantified conclusions, they present a unique opportunity. Mallea- Olaetxe sees this as giving voice to the sheepherders, and in this he is entirely successful: The reader acquires a detailed picture of an unusual and under- recorded complex of people, animals, and landscapes over time. I sense that he was motivated in large measure by cultural affiliation and pride (the Basque government of Euskadi was “the main supporter of the project” [p. xiii]). But-perhaps unwittingly-Mallea-Olaetxe has achieved a good deal more than reclaiming a marginalized group’s history. Speaking through the Aspens covers nearly a century of time and a huge expanse of land, yet it is executed at the finest of grains: the acts of individual herders at distinct locations, often identified to the day. Few other historical data can support such a blending of ethnogra- phy, geography, and history. In light of the struggle that geographers and others are presently having with the issue of scale, this is a singular accomplishment. -NATHAN F. SAYRE, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Jornada Experimental Range PETROLIA: The Landscape of America’s First Oil Boom. By BRIAN BLACK. xii and 235 pp.; maps, ills., bibliog., index. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. $42.50 (cloth), ISBN 0801863171. Brian Black offers a stark panorama of western Pennsylvania’s oil boom and the landscape devastation it produced during the 1860s. It is a startling view, illustrated both with fluid prose and with a remarkable set of contemporary photographs that exquisitely depict the bleak countryside created by the oil seekers. Although Petrolia did not generate the long-lasting scars of a Ihcktown, Bisbee, or Bodie, Black sug- gests that they all derive from the same impulses-impulses that ultimately created places such as Hanford and Love Canal. Black presents the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania as part of an ecological revo- lution in which human society stretched natural resources in new directions. He demonstrates this by exploring the transition from whale oil to petroleum for light- ing and by outlining the technological developments that allowed oil to be extracted efficiently. He blends the legal principle of the “right of capture” into a narrative that seeks to explain the development of a historic landscape and exposes a myth that shapes our current understanding of the territory it occupies. The “right of capture” principle fueled the boom mentality that lured oil seekers to the valley and denied all reasons for prudent extraction. By encouraging immediate removal, the property laws led drillers to unrestrained exploitation. This legal principle, Black argues, prompted the development of technology that ignored efficiency and that fostered industrial-scale production. It also inspired a spiraling of leasing and sub- leasing that undercut stewardship of the resource by separating the owner from the GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS 607 land. Black deftly melds his discussion of legal principles, technology, resource management, and landscape into a convincing account of boom practices that un- folded in other locations and with other resources. The rush to turn oil into dollars sacrificed the agricultural landscape that pre- dated the boom; it covered Oil Creek with a multihued scum; and it spawned tran- sitory towns with little sense of community and no reason to persist. The speculators, according to Black, who rushed to pump petroleum undermined the agrarian coun- tryside in order to fulfill the “myth of progress.” Extraction, commodification, and environmental transformation all served the idea that the transition from domestic to industrial-scale production helped western Pennsylvania fulfill a natural order. Black asks the reader to accept journalistic accounts as assertions of the myth. But I question how pervasive this myth really was, especially in Oil Creek Valley itself, as opposed to the financial centers. Those near ground zero would have had less rea- son to accept such tales. Among the main strengths of this work are the photographs taken by John Mather during the boom days. Traveling throughout the valley, Mather captured images of towns and industrial landscapes that betray, at least to modern viewers, the myths told by journalists. They show children working as oil dippers, denuded hill slopes with oil derricks replacing the forests, and boom towns in all their temporary splendor. Perhaps most telling are the paired photographs of Petroleum Centre, showing the environmental degradation that occurred in the span of four years. But although Black selected pictures with care, he made less use of them than he could have. Inadequate captions blur this window into the historical Pennsylvania landscape. Booms attract a certain type of person-one who is willing to take chances in order to reap huge potential gains. The risk taker’s mentality appears in many forms, changing the relationship between people and the physical environment. Of par- ticular significance in Petrolia were the ever-present risks of flood and fire. Access to oil necessitated development of property on the narrow floodplain along Oil Creek. With hillsides denuded, flooding became likely. Informal cost-benefit analyses, per- formed daily, determined that the profit potential outweighed the risk. Likewise, the many gallons of spilled oil that filled every gully and ditch offered a mighty “cleansing” mechanism. One spark and entire towns could become momentary infernos, then piles of ashes. With few procedures in place to offset the risks, oil- delirious residents shrugged off the danger of both flood and flame. A central concern of this work, made all the more prominent by the photo- graphs, is the landscape itself. Black speaks of the landscape as the artifactual record from which he sought to reconstruct the values of Petrolia. Although much of this discussion draws on the photographs, Black also traces events forward to the current landscape, a landscape that bears little resemblance to that of the boom period. Indeed, reforested parklands now stand as one of the most startling as- pects of Oil Creek Valley. One expects to encounter the scarred hillsides and the decaying structures that mark most ghost towns. Yet the Oil Heritage Park pre- 608 T H E GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW serves a portion of the territory for entirely different purposes. Interpretive signs attempt to acquaint visitors with historic events, drawing our cultural memory back to the “myth of progress.” Petrolia is a convincing story, but I am not fully persuaded that the myth of progress prevailed in other natural-resource booms, or that it provided the model for the likes of Hanford or Love Canal. Although there are many parallels between Petrolia and oil towns in Texas and Louisiana, the larger reserves in those locales and the larger scale of the industry itself forced both states and corporations to reconsider environmental degradation. The Louisiana legislature enacted conser- vation laws to restrain waste in the first decade of the twentieth century. Texas oil companies developed techniques to inject brine back into oil-bearing formations to increase their yields. Certainly such actions reflected new ideas about conserva- tion, but they also underscore the importance of both place and time in shaping events and landscapes. In another fine contribution to the “Creating the North American Landscape” series, Brian Black has done an admirable job. His expos6 of the hurried depletion of the western Pennsylvania oil reserves explores the relationship between land- scape and values and the connection between myth and history. He shows geogra- phers that environmental historians are not content just to examine the impacts of humans on the environment, they are increasingly compelled to explore the do- main of landscapes as well.-CRAIG E. COLTEN, Louisiana State University CRAFTING THE CULTURE AND HISTORY OF FRENCH CHOCOLATE. By SU- SAN J. TERRIO. xiii and 313 pp.; maps, diagrs., ills., bibliog., index. Berkeley: Uni- versity of California Press, 2000. $55.00 (cloth), ISBN 0520221257; $22.50 (paper), ISBN 0520221265. Now then, not far away from here, twenty minutes’ ride, is the most fa- nious chocolate shop in the world. It’s called Le Bon-Bon, which, in case you don’t know it, is French for candy, and it’s run by an old geyser [geezer] called Monsieur Bon-Bon. He’s been in it forfifty years and his dud before him and his grandad before that, arid he makes thefinest sweets and chocolates in the world, get me? Absolutely the top lollies. Now this here old geyser’s a funny old guy and he only opens up his shop for four hours in the middle of the day. Can’t be bothered to keep it open any longer because he and his parents have made so much money that he doesn’t have to work too hard, see? -Joe the Monster, in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: The Magical Car, 1964 Ian Fleming’s fictional mobster ably illustrates a few of the preconceptions surround- ing the venerable chocolate-making tradition of France. France is unquestionably the bastion of gustatory arts: It has introduced the global palate to nouvelle cuisine, fine wine, Armagnac and cognac, and sinful pastries and is credited with influenc- ing a resurgence of artisan bakeries in the United States over the past two decades. Of equal importance, the uprooting of the humble truffle, or the addition of garlic and butter to an otherwise detestable garden pest, have become pinnacles of French GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS 409 gourmandise. France has brought forth such culinary masters as the eighteenth- century food philosopher and critic Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, the father of mod- ern cooking, Auguste Escoffier, and the modern-day television chef, in the person of Jacques Pepin. Yet somehow the historical development and importance of choco- late maisons (houses) to French culture has been largely ignored. The anthropolo- gist Susan Terrio, in Crafting the Culture and History of French Chocolate, details this culture-defining artisanship in an attempt to separate myth from reality in the manufacture and sale of fine French chocolate. Increasingly, geographers are recognizing the importance of localized foodways, menus, and culinary habits as a method of detailing regional culture over time. To this end, Terrio’s examina- tion of entrepreneurship in the Bayonnais region serves as both narrative and meta- phor for understanding artisanship and fieldwork in the context of modern cultural transformations. As the author explains, she did not initially intend to conduct research on the “historical, ethnographic, and fictional” aspects of chocolate artisanship in Paris and southwestern France (p. 1). But her initial interest in the societal structure of artists and their crafts, compounded by craving for an eclair one afternoon, encour- aged her to examine the “evolving chocolate landscapes” of France over the course of five extended research visits throughout the 1990s (p. 3). French artisans have built highly structured organizations both to train workers and to regulate the craft trades. This is no less true of the powerful French chocolate concern. Crucially, the domain of chocolate artisanship has traditionally been one of family and filial duty. The artisanship of chocolate manufacture and sales has, however, been imbued with a variety of concomitant societal and political forces. As in many other societies, French chocolatiers inhabit an entrepreneurial space in a society in which the preparatory liberal education for a career in civil service holds far more value than do the lower educational requirements of the artisanal crafts, crafts often equated to manual labor (p. 13). With increased competition from Bel- gian mass-market chocolates, the lure of steady and secure employment, impend- ing regulation by the European Economic Community, and state educational reform of trades and apprenticeships, chocolatiers have found it necessary to redefine and reauthenticate their art. Overall, French cuisine is representative of good taste, so- phistication, and gracious living. Thus the acknowledgment that a refined palate is not innate forms the basis of marketing in the chocolate subculture. Throughout the book, Terrio outlines the pains with which chocolatiers have reeducated French tastes. A demand for exclusively handmade candies has been constructed by care- fully targeted marketing that focuses on nostalgia and an “artisanal mystique drawn from the past” (p. 196). The creation of good taste and the metamorphosis of the chocolate craft into a profession has not been without its problems. On the surface, the life of the chocolatier may appear idyllic, marked by self-employment, family involvement, and success. But, contrary to Joe the Monster’s assertion of Monsieur Bon-Bon’s independent wealth, Terrio’s detailed interviews with the owners of various choco- 610 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW late houses and their workers show that one may expect protracted apprenticeships for little or no remuneration, long hours, demanding customers, scant opportuni- ties for career advancement, little social standing, and few, if any, benefits. Her in- terviews also reveal a highly gendered subculture in which the wives and daughters of chocolatiers are typically relegated to sales, due in part to the perpetuation of the stereotypical feminine strengths in customer service and design. Women are thought to embody a unique ability to read and predict customer tastes, described by the protagonist Vianne Rocher in Joanne Harris’s book Chocolat as “a knack, a pro- fessional secret, like a fortune teller reading palms.” Vianne goes on to claim, “ I can read their eyes, their mouths, so easily. . . . I sell dreams, small comforts, sweet harmless temptations” (1999,34-35). Terrio’s ethnographic work captures both the poignancy and bitterness of the women’s dedicated service to a chocolaterie and the resultant lifetime of sacrifice. Conversely, Terrio reveals the societal bias that considers men more suited to the manual labor of candy making, ownership and managerial duties, and the extended hours associated with entre- preneurship. Though primarily ethnographic in orientation, Crafting the Culture and History of French Chocolate examines many issues of geographical significance. The author deftly critiques the process of creating “Otherness” and social identity through the symbolism and metaphor of chocolate. When chocolate was initially introduced into European high society, its rarity and high price made it an elite foodstuff- and thus a glaring representation of the imperialism of the Age of Exploration. Terrio then wryly notes that cacao remains a prime representative of globaliza- tion, if not imperialism, to this day. Specifically, chocolate is still a product of the developing world, but it is consumed in the developed world with barely a passing thought to its origin (p. 255). Terrio elaborates on this theme with an analysis of advertising, showing that chocolate continues to be associated with people of color, or the “other” (p. 249). Ultimately, chocolate depicts Otherness as untamability and femininity, a product of nature; conversely, the cultivated tastes of France and the rest of Europe are innately masculine and thereby remain under control (p. 256). Terrio depicts her immersion into French artisanal culture critically and hon- estly. Naively, I did not expect her cultural and historical research to carry the inher- ent dangers associated with the tenuousness and vulnerability of the relationship between the ethnographer and interview subjects. But as a graduate student well acquainted with the rigidity of human-subjects protocols, I felt chills go down my spine when I read the author’s epilogue. Here she unflinchingly describes the unau- thorized translation and publication of her unrevised dissertation in a French chocolatiers’ trade journal. Not only did the publication misrepresent her conclu- sions, but her efforts to render interview sources anonymous were undone. Susan Terrio’s honest recounting of this breach of trust serves as a sober reminder of the potential hazards of fieldwork for any scholar of culture.-KRIsTIN SELINDER MACDONALD, University of Nevada, Reno GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS 611 VIRGINIA IN MAPS: Four Centuries of Settlement, Growth, and Development. Edited by RICHARD W. STEPHENSON and MARIANNE M. MCKEE. xxii and 338 pp.; maps, ills., bibliog., index. Richmond: The Library of Virginia, 2000. $90.00 (cloth), ISBN 0884901912. For those with a curiosity about places, a collection of maps illustrating a particular place offers the possibility of exciting reading and learning. If that collection spans 400 years and is bound into an atlas that includes images of original cartographic expression illustrating places that were to become important venues of political, military, and civic actions, then the potential for intellectual excitement may ap- proach nirvana. Such is the experience that a true geographer can anticipate in read- ing this spectacular map collection, assembled by editors Richard Stephenson and Marianne McKee and vividly narrated through five chapters of text and extended figure captions by John Hkbert, Donald Cresswell, Ronald Grim, Richard Stephenson, and Gary North. The atlas is a showcase for the exemplary map collection housed in the state Library of Virginia in Richmond, from which 92 of the 187 maps, portraits, and other images were drawn. The editors obtained the remaining images from Vir- ginia-related collections at the Library of Congress and a variety of foreign archives. The Library of Virginia has a venerable history, having been built as an annex to the State Library Building in 1920. The library’s map collection received a dedicated space in 1924 and was moved in 1996 into a larger facility that could accommodate the growing holdings. The same year marked the beginning of a three-part project that would celebrate the map collection: a multimedia exhibition of maps and re- lated materials, a scholarly symposium on the mapping of Virginia, and the atlas project that produced Virginia in Maps. The introductory chapter establishes the format followed throughout the atlas: a historical-geographical narrative followed by a portfolio of color maps. In the early 1500s Virginia was the center of a zone of contested ground that extended from Newfoundland to Mexico. The area was contested in part because Spanish and English explorers thought that the large rivers flowing into Chesapeake Bay might hold the possibility of a water route to the Pacific and hence to Asia. The English geographer and promoter Richard Hakluyt, eagerly following the ad- ventures of Francis Drake, Martin Frobisher, and others, promoted English ex- ploration of temperate North America so that England could claim possession and thus foster national trade and economic stability. The 1580s saw expeditions sponsored by Walter Raleigh, Thomas Harriot, and others set forth from En- gland bound for the Virginia and North Carolina coast and intent on establish- ing settlements and exploring inland. Raleigh and Hakluyt actively promotedvirginia settlement and investment. Their efforts are illustrated by a portfolio of paintings and maps prepared by John White and Thomas Harriot, two of the original colo- nists on Roanoke Island. Color and black-and-white reproductions of their 1585 and 1590 maps introduce John HCbert’s initial chapter, “Westward Vision: Seven- teenth-Century Virginia.” 612 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW These initial maps record coastal and nearshore topographic configurations and river and settlement locations. Several maps included Native American villages, with insets of ethnographic drawings depicting building interiors, and Native dress, tools, and weapons. These early maps were oriented with west at the top of the page, as if seen from the eastern vantage point of English investors. Cartographers used iconic symbols for trees and settlements, but their struggle to represent topographic sur- faces led them to portray hills and mountains from an elevated side view, as in a bird’s-eye perspective. Interior maps did not materialize until the second half of the seventeenth cen- tury, when explorers such as John Lederer and Franz Ludwig Michel ventured be- yond the Blue Ridge Mountains into the Shenandoah Valley in search of both mineral deposits and a route west. Although these maps incorporated some generally fac- tual information, they, like numerous other maps of the period, were often replete with errors, showing nonexistent lakes or depicting pine barrens as deserts. Such errors were compounded when the maps were copied. Some richly detailed maps, such as John Smith’s 1606 Virginia. Discovered and Described by Captain John Smith, became “mother maps” that other cartographers copied many times in succeeding generations, often with few corrections or additions. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, scientific cartography, the product of field survey and mathematical and astronomical applications, began to appear. Donald Cresswell presents a trove of land-warrant maps, town plans, state and re- gional maps, and site and road plans in his chapter, “Colony to Commonwealth: The Eighteenth Century.” Especially important is the 1751 A Map of the most Inhab- itedpart ofVirginia. . . , by Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson. This was the first compre- hensive map of the middle colonies since 1673. It is shown as a single plate (the original was 31 ” x 49“) that is followed by four sectional enlargements on which all of the original detail is legible. Individual ridgelines within the Ridge and Valley country are engraved as shaded linear mountains. The Shenandoah Valley’s great wagon road is shown as originating in Philadelphia and passing through Lancaster and Williams Ferry (Williamsport) on its way west and south into Virginia, where it is identified as the “Indian Road by the Treaty of Lancaster.” Among the other ex- emplary maps in this section is a 1782 topographic map by the French Royal Engi- neer Jean Nicolas Desandrouins of the area surrounding Williamsburg. Woodlands and marshlands are carefully represented, and exceptionally fine hachuring delin- eates stream valleys. This map offers detailed context for the more general maps illustrating the encounter between the British naval and land forces and George Washington’s revolutionary army, which included French troops under the com- mand of the comte de Rochambeau. The nineteenth-century antebellum years saw a rapidly increasing appreciation of science-based systematic mapping. Political leaders recognized the potential ap- plications of such mapping for public works and economic development. During the Civil War, Union forces enlisted the existing federal offices of the Bureau of GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS 613 Topographical Engineers, the Coast Survey, and other mapmaking units into a co- ordinated cartographic effort to support Union objectives. In 1864, its combined map and chart output totaled more than 65,000 images. This level of map produc- tion could not have been approached had printing continued to depend on copper- plate engravings. Instead, lithographic presses were finally introduced into the federal mapmaking enterprise, after having been used extensively in private commercial printing since the 1820s. The Confederate leadership had no comparable cartographic infrastructure to meet its critical need for theater and battle-plan maps. The gen- eral lack of maps and geographical knowledge among Confederate military com- manders was so profound that General Richard Taylor lamented, “Here was a limited district.. . within a day’s march of the city of Richmond . . . and yet we were pro- foundly ignorant of the country, were without maps, sketches, or proper guides, and nearly as helpless as if we had suddenly transferred to the banks of the Lualaba [a tributary of the Congo River]” (pp. 196-197). General Robert E. Lee addressed the dearth of Confederate maps by activating a Topographical Department, whose charge was to prepare detailed maps of areas in the southeast where fighting was likely to occur. One of the most accomplished mapmakers to emerge was Jedediah Hotchkiss, who served as General Stonewall Jackson’s topographical engineer. Hotchkiss created many maps during the war, but his major achievement was a 3 ’ x 7% ’ map of the Shenandoah Valley at a scale of 1:80,000 which depicted that country with accuracy unsurpassed until the publica- tion of topographic quadrangles by the U.S. Geological Survey near the turn of the twentieth century. The bird’s-eye-view map was particularly popular with the Civil War public. The New York artist John Bachman was among the most accomplished mapmakers who specialized in this form. His famous 1861 Panorama of the Seat of War. . . presages the high oblique map views drafted by Richard Edes Harrison and published by Fortune magazine during World War 11. The atlas’s final chapter chronicles the rapid development of modern cartogra- phy in the post-Civil War era. The first U.S. Geological Survey topographic map for Virginia was published in 1886. A recent popular rendition of the topographic maps whose evolution is so handsomely represented in the Virginia collection is available from Allan Cartography and Raven Maps & Images. The Raven maps use shaded relief very effectively, so that each topographic province from the Coastal Plain to the Appalachian Plateau is clearly demarcated. Today, a large number of state and federal agencies publish maps, and many produce images that offer some coverage of Virginia. These include a broad group of multipurpose and specialized maps. Virginia in Maps offers a beautiful summary of some of the rare but exception- ally important maps housed in the Library of Virginia, the Library of Congress, and other collections. The extended figure captions offer in-depth information on each image. One could not imagine attempting to tell the historical or geographical story of Virginia or its neighbors to the north, west, and south without reference to this 614 T H E GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW work. One must also commend the press for its commitment to excellent produc- tion values, heavyweight paper, and high-quality printing.-KARL RAITZ, University of Kentucky THE ATLAS OF EXPERIENCE. By LOUISE VAN SWAAI J and JEAN KLARE. English text by DAVID WINNER. 96 pp.; maps, diagrs., ills., index. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2000. $24.95 (cloth), ISBN 1582341001. For those who have ever wondered how to escape the Swamps of Boredom or re- turn to the Reckless Heights of Passion, for those budding geographers who found themselves in trouble for asking their high school English teachers where the Stream of Consciousness actually flows, The Atlas ofExperience is the answer. Here concep- tual maps are taken to delightful extremes, charting the invisible landscapes of “re- ality and fantasy”in ways that would make Peter Gould proud (p. 5). The twenty-one colorful maps are reproduced with the quality of an Edward R. Tufte book. Louise van Swaaij and Jean Klare, Dutch cartographers, mapped this world in 1999, and it was such a success, selling 100,ooo copies in its first nine months, that an English version, with text by David Winner, quickly followed. The map of each territory-including Secrets, Bad Habits, Health, and Pleasure -is introduced by a page or two of musings with quotations from comedians, physi- cists, philosophers, literature, psychologists, rock songs, and various religious teach- ings. These provide background for the maps, but thankfully do not impose a narrative on them. Instead, the reader’s mind is stimulated by the thoughts of Woody Allen and Nietzsche, Hendrix and Heidegger. Sometimes the references or jokes are so British that an American may miss them, but there are many U.S. references as well. For instance, a list of statistics from American Demographics magazine pre- cedes the map for Boredom, showing that 21 percent of U.S. citizens are bored and that “Most Americans respond to such boredom by switching TV channels” (p. 30) . The discussions of literary characters as representative of human attitudes are ulti- mately less interesting than are the human-interest stories, including one about how Handel composed the Messiah in twenty-four days (Stream of Ideas) and an- other relating how Jan Davis took up base-jumping after her first husband’s death and then died when her parachute failed to open as she plunged to the floor of Yosemite Valley (Adventure). Such stories of real experiences put one in an appro- priate frame of mind to study the maps. And the maps are stunning. An added bonus is the 14.5 ‘I x 19 ‘I foldout World of Experience map. Although this “world map” gives less detail than do the others, it does convey additional information about regions. To get the most out of these “map-metaphors,’’ one should scrutinize the individual territory, examine how the borders are linked to other territories and where they overlap, and then consult the same area on the world map to see what the cartographers included, thereby show- ing their biases. Biases are inescapable, after all, in attempts to measure and chart such inherently nonquantifiable data. “The maps are drawn in Subjective Projec- GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS , 615 tion,” the makers acknowledge (p. 5 ) . It is up to the reader to question the place- ments, representations, and selections. Such interaction is the main pleasure of this evocative atlas and seems to be the primary goal of the creators, who have hidden meanings like eggs in a lawn on Easter. As examples of hidden meaning, consider the following. Both Knowledge and the Stream of Ideas are territories in the larger region of Creativity, served by the Icarus Airport. Cold and Fusion are two towns at the tip of Puzzle Peninsula. Near the city of Fantasy in the Brainstorm district, Castles-in-the-Air are represented by castle symbols, but with small shadows added underneath to suggest their loftiness. Fine touches like this occur both in symbols and in wit. The Beaten Track leads directly to See; told you so [sic], cutting through Hypothesis but missing Revelation entirely. Armed with this book, one can avoid the Vomit volcano and the three small isles of Chicken Pox when traveling through Health. Especially helpful, perhaps, is hav- ing the Isles of Forgetfulness charted once and for all, so one can find the major city of Damn Keys and use the Mnemonic Bridge to cross over to Test Isle. The village of Joke is distressingly far from the village of Punchline, with no connecting routes. If ever attacked, Fort Alzheimer is ready to be defended (but can the defenders find their ammunition?). Geographical puns lurk in these pages: Where are the Which Is- lands? Off the Isles of Forgetfulness, suggesting the former name of Hawaii. As one reads and compares the maps closely, many inconsistencies spark ques- tions. Why does the world map show the city of Fantasy but not the metropolis of Ignorance? Why do certain symbols, like the (presumed) footpath that leads from the Swamps of Boredom to Impulse, not appear in the extensive legend? But ques- tions like these are a distraction from the free association in which one wants to lose oneself. Other sources of confusion may have originated in translation. Although the foreword, for example, refers to “twenty-one countries,” some of these coun- tries overlap and share capitals (p. 5 ) . Other problems are more fundamental. The authors incorporate many geo- graphical elements into their maps, including topography, trade and travel routes, ecosystems, and weather. The fact that the city of Stress is constantly under a high- pressure system is entertaining, but it may not be worth the joke if this is the only climatic referent. In many places mountains are depicted by symbols, but the color of the land does not indicate higher elevation. Streams seem to flow from low ground to high to low again. In literature, an extended metaphor is expected to be consis- tent with its literal basis, but here metaphors are pushed beyond the topographic conventions they rely on. Or consider the world map, with its continent divided into four regions labeled by seasons. Studying the map brings pleasure as one sees how life begins in Spring and moves eastward to Winter. But one might wonder why Passion and Lust are in Spring whereas Home is not, why Adventure is in Winter, and why the large Island of Haute Cuisine exists at all when there is not even a mud puddle called Sex? One can assume many things about the authors from their selections-just as one can assume much about the reviewer who asks such questions. 616 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW The graphics in The Atlas of Experience could have been more metaphorically rigorous, but the authors deserve credit for taking on such a huge challenge. It is provocative to consider how human experiences, emotions, and philosophies may be represented cartographically. Teachers in various disciplines-including geography, psychology, graphic design, history, and literature-could use this book as a model, assigning students such tasks as pondering how people of different genders, ethnicities, ages, and incomes would draw the same experi- ences. Maps often provide information about familiar lands that allows one to recall what it was like to be there and about unfamiliar lands in ways that raise the desire to travel there-or to avoid them completely. The difference between the Rand McNally Road Atlas and The Atlas of Experience is that these maps include places impossible to return to, as well as those impossible to avoid.-LILACE MELLIN GUIGNARD, University of Nevada, Reno