How to Lie with Maps
Mark Monmonier
Shows that every map necessarily distorts, generalises or omits, so a map's choices about what to include and how to symbolise it are themselves a form of argument that can mislead as easily as inform.
Earth & Environmental Science · Geography & Cartography
A topic within Geography & Cartography, itself one of 8 topics in that field and part of Earth & Environmental Science.
No prior grounding assumed.
How to Lie with Maps
Mark Monmonier · 1991
Shows that every map necessarily distorts, generalises or omits, so a map's choices about what to include and how to symbolise it are themselves a…
Primary sources and full treatments.
Map Projections: A Working Manual
John P. Snyder · 1987
Derives the mathematics of the major map projections from first principles and supplies the formulas to implement each, becoming the reference…
+1 more at this level
3 works
Mark Monmonier
Shows that every map necessarily distorts, generalises or omits, so a map's choices about what to include and how to symbolise it are themselves a form of argument that can mislead as easily as inform.
John P. Snyder
Derives the mathematics of the major map projections from first principles and supplies the formulas to implement each, becoming the reference cartographers still compute from.
link checked 17 Sept 2026J. B. Harley
Argues maps are never neutral records of terrain but encode the power relations and silences of the society that made them, and should be read as texts rather than mirrors.
link failing as of 17 Sept 2026