Cartographia

Critical Praise

"Some five million maps are housed in the Library of Congress. You'll swear most of them are contained in its CARTOGRAPHIA: MAPPING CIVILIZATIONS, written by Vincent Virga. For map lovers like me, this elegant, oversized book is porn. If your coffee table is crying out for one map book, this is the only one you need, containing full-color representations of maps from all eras and covering all points of the earth. The sheer scope of styles utilized by their creators is breathtaking and beautiful. You can keep your art books of famous paintings by the masters; I'll take maps any day."
-Bookgasm.com

"With the advent of MapQuest and OnStar, it’s probably been a while since you’ve had to whip out the old Rand McNally to get yourself situated. But maps can tell us far more than how to get from A to B. They are conduits to a culture’s ethos—or at least they are in Vincent Virga’s Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations, a new annotated compendium highlighting the Library of Congress’s vast array of maps dating from ancient Babylonia all the way up to 21st-century Europe. The beautiful hardbound collection also includes maps that are abstract (like the red state–blue state diagram from the 2000 presidential election), fictional (like Faulkner’s map of Yoknapatawpha County from the first edition of Absalom, Absalom!) and completely unrelated to geography (like the map of the human genome)."
-Timeout.com

"Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations will thrill anyone who loves history. Measuring 10-1/4 wide and 13 inches from top to bottom, the sheer size and weight of this book is impressive, but that’s just the beginning. With a text by Vincent Virga and a selection of 200 maps from the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress, the largest cartographic collection in the world, this book offers history as seen through the mapmaker’s eyes, from the Babylonians to the 2001 map of the human genome, the book shows how, through exploration, men from the earliest civilizations to today created all manner of graphic representations of the earth, including William Faulkner’s hand-drawn 1936 map of the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, that earned him a Nobel Press in literature. What surprises the reader is how accurate even the earliest maps tended to be as rivers, cities and coastlines emerged on paper to guide those who dared to go to lands "where dragons dwell."
-Bookviews.com

"Geography and map lovers -- and we've learned they are legion -- will adore this lush, oversized, full-color volume. It's divided into four sections: The Mediterranean World: the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Etruscans, the Romans, the Islamic World, the Holy Land, and the Mediterranean Sea; The Three-Part World: Asia, Africa, Europe; The Fourth Part: The Americas: Latin America and Anglo America; and The Fifth Part: Oceania and Antarctica: Oceania and Antarctica."
-Historywire.com

"Cartographia is a wonderful coffee table book for the history or map buff in your family. It traces maps and civilizations back to early Barylonian times, long before modern mapmaking skills. In my (American) ignorance, I always though that man believed the Earth was flat until Christopher Columbus came along. But the ancient Greeks were making round maps to match the known lands of the Earth hundreds of years before Christ."
-Jandysbooks.com

"I cannot say this emphatically enough (and mere words cannot do justice to what readers will discover for themselves within the pages of Cartographia): Unlike any atlas ever previously published, Virga's book is a dazzling, singularly splendid vision of the world and of people's places within it. As a browser's paradise, Cartographia is a perfect destination. To say it another way, this coffee-table book is an exquisite publishing achievement that belongs in every book-lover's library, and if you buy only one book this year, this must be the one."
-Bookloons.com

"Cartographia is a treasure that is waiting for map and history lovers of all generations to discover."
-Armchairinterviews.com

"Virga, offers a stunning array of 200 of the most beautiful, important and fascinating maps in existence, including the world's largest cartographic collection at the Library of Congress. These maps show how our idea of the world has shifted over time, where each map tells its own unique story about nations, politics and ambitions. The chosen images, with their accompanying stories, introduce the reader to an exciting new way of reading maps as travelogues."
-Clubfreetime.com

"Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations will thrill anyone who loves history. Measuring 10 1/4 wide and 13 inches from top to bottom, the sheer size and weight of this book is impressive, but that's just the beginning. With a text by Vincent Virga and a selection of 200 maps from the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress, the largest cartographic collection in the world, this book offers history as seen through the mapmaker's eyes, from the Babylonians to the 2001 map of the human genome, the book shows how, through exploration, men from the earliest civilizations to today created all manner of graphic representations of the earth, including William Faulkner's hand-drawn 1936 map of the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, that earned him a Nobel Press in literature. What surprises the reader is how accurate even the earliest maps tended to be as rivers, cities and coastlines emerged on paper to guide those who dared to go to lands "where dragons dwell."
-Bookviews.com

"This is one of those rare coffee-table books that deserves to be read, that repeatedly delights the eye while informing the mind about the rich variety of humans' attempts to orient themselves in the world."
-Publishers Weekly

"Dreamy maps get their due in Vincent Virga's splendidly illustrated "Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations."
-International Herald Tribune

"To see the long history of world cartography—so artfully revealed here—is to appreciate how humankind began discovering its position in the cosmos."
-William Least Heat-Moon, author of Blue Highways

"Vincent Virga's CARTOGRAPHIA illuminates my own lifelong attempt to map the readings and misreadings of canonical texts. Virga shows us the mapping of civilizations and shrewdly indicates the elements of mismapping that necessarily are involved."
-Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of Humanities, Yale University

"For anybody who is interested in the history of maps and the way maps have changed history—and who is not?—this book is not only a visual treasure trove, but essential reading."
-Michael Korda, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of Simon & Schuster and New York Times bestselling author of Country Matters, Horse People, and Ulysses S. Grant

"Cartographia's sumptuousmaps--handsomely arranged and thoughtfully presented—are both exquisite artifacts and portals to the planet's cultures; a feast for the eye and mind."
-Mike Wallace, Pulitzer Prize-winning coauthor of Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898

"The maps in Cartographia move beyond the treasures of Western cartography and delve into the Library's vast international collections of materials from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. It is these international collections that bear witness to the civilizations from around the world from which Americans have come, and out of which the civilization of the United States has been created."
-James H. Billington, The Librarian of Congress

"Another smart looking map book: The Library of Congress and Vincent Virga teamed up to produce a special salute to mapmaking called Cartographia; Mapping Civilizations. It's a collection of over 200 maps that show how the world has been charted over time. The selections for this volume (some of which are quite rare), were pulled directly from the Library of Congress, which houses the largest cartographic collection in the world."
-Gadling.com