of Geographic Information Science. While the focus is on Google Earth, it isnot simply a history of Google or a history of GIS, but rather examines theimpacts of these on mapping and ways of viewing the world.

Brotten concludes with an excellent summation of the idea that “. . .noworld map is, or can be, a definitive, transparent depiction of its subject thatoffers a disembodied eye onto the world. Each one is a continual negotiationbetween its makers and users, as their understanding of the world changes.World maps are in a perpetual state of becoming. . .” (p. 437).

There are a few slips that detract from the overall high quality of the book,such as referring to climata as longitudinal. He notes that a lithograph from astone would be right reading—however, that is only the case if the image on thestone is wrong reading; this is the reason for offset lithography. The inlaid hemi-spheres on the floor of Amsterdam’s Town Hall are described as “flat hemispher-ical globes”; a flat globe is an oxymoron. The caption on the illustration doesnot describe them as globes, thus these could be ascribed to editorial errors.

Of course, when an author picks twelve maps, it is inevitable that the readerwill ask, “why isn’t X map included?” For example, I wondered why the Ebstorfmappa mundi was not mentioned in the discussion with the Hereford map. Orwhy the maps by Marie Tharp, that changed our thinking about the nature ofthe earth and formation of the continents, were not worthy of mention. Otherreaders will have their own “pet” maps. However, on the whole his selection isa rational and legitimate group.

There are three items I wish had been included. Although the majority ofreaders will have a grasp of world geography and locations, I would have likedto see a few more simple, modern location maps for areas under discussion,such as a map showing countries of the Middle East as he did by including amap of Southeast Asia. “Callouts” in the text referring to the color plateswould be especially useful to the reader. This is particularly a problem whenseveral plates illustrate a chapter. Finally, although there are extensive notes, Iwould have liked a bibliography. However, this is usually a publisher’s decisionand the author may have had no say in the matter.

Overall, I found this book to be a commendable addition to the history ofcartography literature and I highly recommend it.—JUDITH A. TYNER, CaliforniaState University, Long Beach

HERE BE DRAGONS: Exploring Fantasy Maps and Settings. By STEFAN EKMAN.viii and 284 pp., maps, ills., bibliog., index. Middletown, Conn.: WesleyanUniversity Press, 2013. $67.50 (cloth), $20.62 (paper), ISBN 9780819573230.

Stefan Ekman has set out to fill a gap in fantasy literary criticism, namely theimportance of landscape in fantasy literature. He notes that “apart from occa-sional brief reflections on the landscape’s central importance to fantasy, little

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has been written on the subject” (p. 2). He points out that although the land-scape is considered important to the genre, in other studies most attention ispaid to character and plot.

In fact, little has been written on maps and landscape in literature in gen-eral. Philip and Juliana Muehrcke’s 1974 “Maps in Literature,” Yi-Fu Tuan onmaps in Sherlock Holmes, Ricardo Padron’s “Mapping Imaginary Worlds,”J. B. Post’s Atlas of Fantasy, George Demko’s website “Landscapes in Crime,”and Nicholas Tam’s website article “Here Be Cartographers: Reading the Fan-tasy Map,” plus unpublished theses and conference presentations are some ofthe main sources. I know of nothing book length. Even books on the writingof genre fiction rarely discuss use of maps, although they may address setting.And yet, maps and setting play a major role in much genre fiction, especiallyin science fiction and fantasy where new worlds are created, described, andmapped.

This book focuses on works from the mid-1970s to 2007, but makes anexception for the works of Tolkien and refers to the Lord of the Rings trilogythroughout the book. Ekman’s main interest lies in how the setting works inrelation to the story. He uses a “topofocal” or place-focused perspective toexamine the four types of fantasy divisions described in the chapters.

The book is well structured. The first chapter is an introduction and definesterms such as high and low fantasy, primary and secondary worlds. The fourmain chapters are “Maps,” “Borders and Boundaries,” “Nature and Culture,”and “Realms and Rulers.” Ekman describes these chapters as moving fromlarge-scale to small fantasy maps, divisions between domains, interrelationshipbetween two domains in an urban setting, and finally, the link between rulersand realms. These chapters are designed to stand alone and can be read in anyorder. Each of the main chapters has an introduction followed by a discussionof several examples from fantasy literature and a summary.

The chapter on maps is likely to be of particular interest to geographers. Inkeeping with the basic chapter structure, Ekman first looks at previous explora-tions of fantasy maps and then asks the now obligatory question “what is amap?” and more specifically, “what is a fantasy map?” He discusses how toregard maps that are not representations of an actual place. Even though manymaps and settings in literature are of this type—the maps in Gulliver’s Travels,the map of William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County—there has been com-paratively little study of such cartographic representations. A major part of thischapter consists of a statistical survey of fantasy maps. Drawing on a randomsample of 200 maps from a sample frame of nearly 5000 maps, he looks at theprevalence of maps in the novels, how many maps the novel contains, andthe features on the maps. I am not sure that such a formal statistical analysisadds to the book. Knowing that 87 percent of the maps in the book sampleinclude rivers, while being more “scientific” for a book of this nature is nomore useful or informative than saying most maps include rivers. Is knowing

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that 5.4 percent of the maps include a projection more meaningful than sayingthat projections are rare on fantasy maps?

One problem when surveying the use of maps in novels is that often mapsare omitted from reprint paperback editions owing to publishing costs. If thesurvey isn’t confined to first editions, this can skew the results. It appears thatthis was not an issue here.

In the map chapter, the author “reads” two fantasy maps, “A Part of theShire” and “The West of Middle-earth,” both from The Fellowship of the Ring.Unfortunately, illustrations of these two maps are not included. In fact, onlythree maps are included in the entire book: “Isles of Glory” from GlendaLarke’s Gilfeather, a graticule from “The Sixteen Kingdoms of Faltha” in RussellKirkpatrick’s Right Hand of God, and the map from Ian Irvine’s Geomancer.While the author has assumed, probably correctly, that anyone reading Here BeDragons has read Tolkien, and/or has the maps at hand, it is possible that areader may be looking at maps in literature in general, or is a mystery orscience fiction reader. Thus, someone unfamiliar with the Tolkien maps will belost. This latter comment applies to the other chapters in the book, and theproblem also arises when Ekman discusses examples from additional fantasybooks; more than passing familiarity with the literature and its major booksand authors is assumed.

The author has included two appendices. The first discusses the methodologyfor the map survey and includes the formulas for margin of error. The secondis a list of the books in the map sample and includes title, year, and series andnotes whether maps are included. The endnotes and the bibliography are exten-sive, and the book is well indexed.—JUDITH A. TYNER, California State Univer-sity, Long Beach

THE ROUTES NOT TAKEN: A Trip Through New York City’s UnbuiltSubway System. By JOSEPH B. RASKIN. xii and 323 pp.; maps, diagrs., ills.,bibliog., index. New York: Fordham University Press, 2014. $34.95 (cloth),isbn 9780823253692.

The long-awaited 2nd Avenue subway in Manhattan is finally scheduled to openin 2016; only its first phase. The rest will likely take much longer. This ManhattanEast Side line was originally proposed in 1920, in an ambitious plan released byDaniel Turner, then head of the Public Service Commission, along with manyother lines to the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and even Staten Island. Whereasmost of these other projects were forgotten or, sometimes, built, the 2nd Avenueline has gradually become the symbol of a system unable to modernize, muchless to develop. Without a regular source of money besides the fare box, the NewYork City subway history is a succession of dashed hopes, refinancing, servicedisruptions, emergency repairs, and, more recently, crowdedness.

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