BOOK REVIEW
A Sense of Where You Are: Excerpts from The History of Cartography, The Illustrated Longitude and Atlas of the Universe
Originally belonging to the Skiri band of the Pawnees, the [painted celestial deerskin] chart was collected at Pawnee, Oklahoma, in 1906 as part of a sacred bundle. It may be a descendant of a precontact original. The Milky Way, which the Pawnees thought of as parting the heavens and as the pathway of departed spirits, is represented by small dots across the middle of the chart.
The History of Cartography, Vol. 2, Book 3: Cartography in the Traditional African, American, Arctic Australian
and Pacific Societies
David Woodward and G. Malcolm Lewis, eds.
University of Chicago Press, $150
Ptolemy's prime meridian [from the 1482 edition of Cosmographia] ran through the westernmost point of known civilization, the Fortunate Islands, or Isles of the Blest, which correspond today with the Canary Islands.
The Illustrated Longitude
Dava Sobel, William J. H. Andrewes
Walker & Co., $32.95
This map [topographic globes of Venus from Pioneer Venus 2 in 1978] was compiled as a false-color representation with blue indicating low [altitudes] and yellow and red higher areas.
Atlas of the Universe
Patrick Moore
Cambridge University Press, $39.95
About once a month at Sigma Xi headquarters, we liven up the lunch hour with an American Scientist Pizza Lunch talk. In these informal lectures, scientists describe new research to nonscientists. The series is light on jargon but heavy on solid science. Each Pizza Lunch offers an in-depth look at its subject, whether it's bedbugs or the smart grid. Click below to read about and download these talks -- and to subscribe!
