The Geographers Bio-bibliographical Series Volume 28 includes essays on Dick Chorley, the influential geomorphologist, Charles P. Daly, long-serving president of the American Geographical Society, Marion Newbigin, one of the leading women geographers of the early twentieth century and Peter Heyleyn, early modern humanist, historian and geographical author.
The American Geographical Society was the pre-eminent geographical society in the nineteenth-century U.S. This book explores how geographical knowledge and practices took shape as a civic enterprise, under the leadership of Charles P. Daly, AGS president for 35 years (1864-1899). The ideals and programmatic interests of the AGS link to broad institutional, societal, and spatial contexts that drove interest in geography itself in the post-Civil War period, and also link to Charles Daly's personal role as New York civic leader, scholar, revered New York judge, and especially, popularizer of geography. Daly's leadership in a number of civic and social reform causes resonated closely with his work as geographer, such as his influence in tenement housing and street sanitation reform in New York City. Others of his projects served commercial interests, including in American railroad development and colonization of the African Congo. Daly was also New York's most influential access point to the Arctic in the latter nineteenth century. Through telling the story of the nineteenth-century AGS and Charles Daly, this book provides a critical appraisal of the role of particular actors, institutions, and practices involved in the development and promotion of geography in the mid-nineteenth century U.S. that is long overdue.
Petermann's Maps focuses on the maps published in the famous German journal Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen. This journal, which still exists today, greatly influenced the development of scientific geography and cartography in Germany in the nineteenth century. Numerous articles have been published by recognized experts in this field, along with a multitude of illustrations, showing maps, prints and photographs. The journal developed into an important publication, setting the standard in the history of the great expeditions and discoveries, and European colonial matters. Petermann's Maps contains a bibliography of over 3400 maps, the complete series of maps published in Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen between the year of its foundation, 1855, to the end of the Second World War. Besides the bibliography 160 of the most attractive geographical and thematic coloured maps are included in Petermann's Maps. These maps can also be viewed on the CD-ROM accompanying the book.An extensive introduction precedes the cartobibliography proper, placing Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen in its historical context. The introduction describes the history of geography from the eighteenth century onwards, outlining the development of the study of the science of cartography in Germany. The major role the founder of the journal, Augustus Petermann (1822-1878), and the publishing house Justus Perthes in Gotha played in these developments is discussed at length.
The first volume of this work, covering the period from 1741-1850, was issued in 1931 by another publisher, and is reissued now without change, under our imprint. The second volume covers the period from 1850 to 1865; the third volume, the period from 1865 to 1885. For each chronological period, Mr. Mott has provided a running history which notes the occurrence of the chief general magazines and the developments in the field of class periodicals, as well as publishing conditions during that period, the development of circulations, advertising, payments to contributors, reader attitudes, changing formats, styles and processes of illustration, and the like. Then in a supplement to that running history, he offers historical sketches of the chief magazines which flourished in the period. These sketches extend far beyond the chronological limitations of the period. The second and third volumes present, altogether, separate sketches of seventy-six magazines, including The North American Review, The Youth's Companion, The Liberator, The Independent, Harper's Monthly, Leslie's Weekly, Harper's Weekly, The Atlantic Monthly, St. Nicholas, and Puck. The whole is an unusual mirror of American civilization.
In the late 1800s, “Arctic Fever” swept across the nation as dozens of American expeditions sailed north to the Arctic to find a sea route to Asia and, ultimately, to stand at the North Pole. Few of these missions were successful, and many men lost their lives en route. Yet failure did little to dampen the enthusiasm of new explorers or the crowds at home that cheered them on. Arctic exploration, Michael F. Robinson argues, was an activity that unfolded in America as much as it did in the wintry hinterland. Paying particular attention to the perils facing explorers at home, The Coldest Crucible examines their struggles to build support for the expeditions before departure, defend their claims upon their return, and cast themselves as men worthy of the nation’s full attention. In so doing, this book paints a new portrait of polar voyagers, one that removes them from the icy backdrop of the Arctic and sets them within the tempests of American cultural life. With chronological chapters featuring emblematic Arctic explorers—including Elisha Kent Kane, Charles Hall, and Robert Peary—The Coldest Crucible reveals why the North Pole, a region so geographically removed from Americans, became an iconic destination for discovery.