Book Review: The Rise and Fall of the National Atlas

Summary

This review presents John Rennie Short’s The Rise and Fall of the National Atlas in the Twentieth Century as an accessible, carefully contextualized study developed over twenty years. The book examines national atlases as instruments of state-building, sovereignty, territorial claims, and political power, addressing related questions of racism, imperialism, colonialism, and national identity. Historical discussion and case studies—including Argentina, China, Peru, Korea, and Finland—illustrate how atlas-making has served territorial disputes and projects of national renewal, making the volume relevant to readers of cartography, globalization, and the nation-state.