Maps are inherently unnatural. Projecting three-dimensional realities onto two-dimensional surfaces, maps are abstractions that capture someone’s idea of what matters within a particular place; they require selections and omissions. It is these very characteristics, however, that give maps their importance in understanding how humans have interacted with the natural world and that give historical maps… Read More Kathleen A. Brosnan, James R. Akerman (eds.) (2020): Mapping Nature across the Americas, University of Chicago Press: Chicago.

For most of human history, the seas and oceans have been the main means of long-distance trade and communication between peoples – for the spread of ideas and religion as well as commerce. This book traces the history of human movement and interaction around and across the world’s greatest bodies of water, charting our relationship… Read More David Abulafia (2019): The Boundless Sea. A Human History of the Oceans. Alan Lane: London.

The Nördlinger Ries and Steinheim Basin, two conspicuous geological structures in southern Germany, were traditionally viewed as somewhat enigmatic but nevertheless definitely volcanic edifices until they were finally recognized as impact craters in the 1960s. The changing views about the origin of the craters mark an important paradigm shift in the Earth sciences, from an… Read More Martina Kölbl-Ebert (2020): From Local Patriotism to a Planetary Perspective. Impact Crater Research in Germany, 1930s-1970s. Routledge, London and New York.

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, formerly socialist countries have gone through manifold transformations, whilst remnants of socialism remain ubiquitous. The volume explores various spaces of the postsocialist landscape, presenting a mixture of real and imaginary spaces, of memory and nostalgia, of aesthetic and political symbolism, of the global East and the global South,… Read More Thomas Lahusen and Schamma Schahadat (eds.) (2020): Postsocialist Landscapes. Real and Imaginary Spaces from Stalinstadt to Pyongyang, transcript: Bielefeld.

Als sich der niederländische Kartograph und Landschaftsmaler Charles William Meredith van de Velde 1851 nach Palästina einschiffte, plante er nichts Geringeres, als eigenhändig das Heilige Land zu vermessen. Lange schon hatte die christliche Welt eine Karte auf Grundlage moderner Vermessungstechnik gefordert. Doch das Osmanische Reich, zu dem Palästina seit Ende der Kreuzzüge gehörte, hatte wenig… Read More Jutta Faehndrich (2020): Als Künstler und Kartograph im Heiligen Land (1851/52): Die drei Palästina des C.W.M. van de Velde, D. Reimer: Berlin.

International scholarship is increasingly aware that the ‘geographical tradition’ is a contentious and contested field: while critical reflections on the imperial past of the discipline are still ongoing, new tendencies including de-colonial studies and geographies of internationalism are focusing on the progressive aspects of plural geographical traditions. This volume contains selected papers presented at two… Read More Bruno Schelhaas, Federico Ferretti, André Reyes Novaes, Marcella Schmidt di Friedberg (2020): Decolonising and Internationalising Geography. Essays in the History of Contested Science, Springer: Cham.

This book gives a comprehensive view of the strengths and limits of the interdisciplinary methods that work together to form the geohistorical approach to geographical and geological sciences. The geohistorical approach can be synthetically defined as a multi- and interdisciplinary approach that uses techniques and perspectives, mainly from geography, history, and natural sciences, to examine… Read More Silvia Elena Piovan (2020): The Geohistorical Approach. Methods and Applications, Springer: Cham.

Als die Eisenbahntechnologie versprach, Berge zu versetzen, wurden weltweit Geographien ins Wanken gebracht. Nichts schien in Zukunft sein zu müssen, wie es war – auch nicht im Land der Fjorde und der langen Winter. Die Autorin schreibt anhand der norwegischen Eisenbahngeschichte einen Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte der europäischen Geographie. Sie untersucht, wie Debatten über den Eisenbahnbau… Read More Marie-Theres Fojuth (2019): Herrschaft über Land und Schnee. Norwegische Eisenbahngeographien 1845-1909 (= Geschichte der technischen Kultur, Band 7), Ferdinand Schöningh: Paderborn.

Over the past twenty years, scholars have increasingly questioned not just historical presumptions about the putative rise of modern science during the long nineteenth century but also the geographical contexts for and variability of science during the era. In Geographies of Knowledge, an internationally distinguished array of historians and geographers examine the spatialization of science… Read More Robert J. Mayhew and Charles W. J.Withers (eds.) (2020): Geographies of Knowledge: Science, Scale, and Spatiality in the Nineteenth Century (Medicine, Science, and Religion in Historical Context), Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore.