"A brainy noir . . . [a] winningly cryptic tale . . . a cabinet of wonders written by a novelist whose surname and sensibility fit comfortably on the shelf between Umberto Eco and John Fowles." —Los Angeles Times "One of the year’s most literate and absorbing entertainments." —Kirkus Reviews Jon Fasman’s dizzyingly plotted intellectual thriller suggests a marriage between Dan Brown and Donna Tartt. When reporter Paul Tomm is assigned to investigate the mysterious death of a reclusive academic, he finds himself pursuing leads that date back to the twelfth century and the theft of alchemical instruments from the geographer of the Sicilian court. Now someone is trying to retrieve them. Interspersed with the present action are the stories of the men and women who came to possess those charmed—and sometimes cursed—artifacts, which have powers that go well beyond the transmutation of lead into gold. Deftly combining history, magic, suspense, and romance—and as handsomely illustrated as an ancient incunabulum—The Geographer’s Library is irresistible.

"A brainy noir . . . [a] winningly cryptic tale . . . a cabinet of wonders written by a novelist whose surname and sensibility fit comfortably on the shelf between Umberto Eco and John Fowles." —Los Angeles Times "One of the year’s most literate and absorbing entertainments." —Kirkus Reviews Jon Fasman’s dizzyingly plotted intellectual thriller suggests a marriage between Dan Brown and Donna Tartt. When reporter Paul Tomm is assigned to investigate the mysterious death of a reclusive academic, he finds himself pursuing leads that date back to the twelfth century and the theft of alchemical instruments from the geographer of the Sicilian court. Now someone is trying to retrieve them. Interspersed with the present action are the stories of the men and women who came to possess those charmed—and sometimes cursed—artifacts, which have powers that go well beyond the transmutation of lead into gold. Deftly combining history, magic, suspense, and romance—and as handsomely illustrated as an ancient incunabulum—The Geographer’s Library is irresistible.

In any edited volume most credit is due to the individual authors. The present case is no exception and we as editors have done little apart from serving as coordinators for a group of friends and colleagues. For once, the responsi bilities are shared. We feel that the collection gives a fair representation of the activities at the frontier of human geography in North America. Whether these premonitions will be further substantiated is of course to be seen. In the meantime, we take refuge in Vico's saying that "doctrines must take their beginning from that of the matter of which they treat". And yet we also know that new treatments never lead to fmal ends, but rather to new doctrines and to new beginnings. It is also a pleasure to acknowledge those publishers and authors who have given permission to reprint copyrighted materials: Association of American Geographers for Leslie J. King's 'Alternatives to a Positive Economic Geography', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 66,1976; Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd. for Yi-Fu Tuan's 'Space and Place: Human istic Perspective', in Christopher Board et al. (eds. ), Progress in Geography, Vol. 6, 1974; Economic Geography for David Harvey's 'Population, Resources, and the Ideology of Science' ,Economic Geography, Vol. SO, 1974; Institute of British Geographers for David Ley's 'Social Geography and the Taken-for-Granted World', Transactions of the Institute of British Geogra phers, Vol. 2, 1977; and North-Holland Publishing Company for Allen J.

Answers more than one thousand commonly asked geography questions, arranged by topic, such as climate, water and ice, exploration, cultural geography, and others.

With the onslaught of emergent technology in academia, libraries are privy to many innovative techniques to recognize and classify geospatial data?above and beyond the traditional map librarianship. As librarians become more involved in the development and provision of GIS services and resources, they encounter both problems and solutions. Integrating Geographic Information Systems into Library Services: A Guide for Academic Libraries integrates traditional map librarianship and contemporary issues in digital librarianship within a framework of a global embedded information infrastructure, addressing technical, legal, and institutional factors such as collection development, reference and research services, and cataloging/metadata, as well as issues in accessibility and standards.

More than just colorful clickbait or pragmatic city grids, maps are often deeply emotional tales: of political projects gone wrong, budding relationships that failed, and countries that vanished. In Map Men, Steven Seegel takes us through some of these historical dramas with a detailed look at the maps that made and unmade the world of East Central Europe through a long continuum of world war and revolution. As a collective biography of five prominent geographers between 1870 and 1950—Albrecht Penck, Eugeniusz Romer, Stepan Rudnyts’kyi, Isaiah Bowman, and Count Pál Teleki—Map Men reexamines the deep emotions, textures of friendship, and multigenerational sagas behind these influential maps. Taking us deep into cartographical archives, Seegel re-creates the public and private worlds of these five mapmakers, who interacted with and influenced one another even as they played key roles in defining and redefining borders, territories, nations—and, ultimately, the interconnection of the world through two world wars. Throughout, he examines the transnational nature of these processes and addresses weighty questions about the causes and consequences of the world wars, the rise of Nazism and Stalinism, and the reasons East Central Europe became the fault line of these world-changing developments. At a time when East Central Europe has surged back into geopolitical consciousness, Map Men offers a timely and important look at the historical origins of how the region was defined—and the key people who helped define it.

This classic work is a comprehensive treatment of the world’s political frontiers and boundaries, and includes sections on boundaries in the air as well as chapters treating the subject in a regional manner, covering the continents in terms of the evolution of boundaries.