Map Men

Seegel has written a fascinating study of the cosmopolitan wanderings of a group of provincialists. We watch as the biographies of these 'map men'--smart, frustrated, illiberal, self-important, and adventurous--converge to create a 'Non-Republic of Letters' that sought to give national causes an international profile via the politics of cartography. Well researched and with a spritely narrative voice, this book is an original, non-national journey across a deeply nationalist cartographic landscape. --Holly Case, Brown University Creatively researched and beautifully written, Seegel uses biography to refashion the historical map of Central Europe. --Kate Brown, The University of Maryland, Baltimore County In his brilliant new book, historian Seegel has shifted his focus from maps to the men who make them. . . . Seegel succeeds in making the reader 'more skeptical of national-heroic and literalist readings of lives and maps'. In this and other regards, Map Men should be of great interest to the Polish or East Central European specialist--or for that reason, anyone interested in geographers or cartographers more generally. --H-Net Seegel has written a remarkable work--one that is erudite, far-reaching, insightful, and focused on matters of enduring importance for the study of modern Europe. Maps are cold. By comparison, lives are much warmer. The great gift of this book is that it stirs up the placid world of maps so that we feel the lived, often momentous and deeply personal geographies that lay behind them. The life stories that intertwine here perfectly illustrate Seegel's overarching theme of how late nineteenth-century Central Europe's German-dominated Wissenschaft culture was undone in the heat of twentieth-century war and revolution. --Willard Sunderland, University of Cincinnati