Letter from the Editor

Greetings, dear readers, and welcome to the (semi-belated) one hundred and eighth issue of Cartographic Perspectives.

First, let me apologize for the delay and assure you that we will still be publishing three issues this year (in fact, you can go to our website, click the “Archives” tab, and check out our upcoming issues already in development!). Second, allow me to briefly explain the content of this issue. This is our guest edited, topically focused issue for 2026, and has been organized and shepherded through the publication process by Will B. Payne and Evangeline McGlynn. Their introduction will follow and lay out the history, motivations, and contents of this issue in greater detail; but, I would like to emphasize that it reflects the “big tent” view of cartography that I firmly believe Cartographic Perspectives exists to support.

If you’re reading the introductory letter to an issue of CP, you are already interested in cartography (or, perhaps, you are lost, in which case I hope I can convince you to become interested in cartography). But, what exactly constitutes cartography is, and I hope remains, a subject for debate. We can disagree with one another—as many of our authors have over the years—as to what constitutes a map and mapmaking, we may even disagree as to what we find interesting or important in the field of cartography; but, what I hope that we can all agree upon is that Cartographic Perspectives offers the space for those discussions to occur—for wide ranging philosophical expositions on the nature of mapping in history and detailed, technical examinations of maps across their many forms.

The book reviews for this issue, which are not part of the guest edited content, reflect that view. We have a wonderful review by Lisa Gaetjens of Krygier and Wood’s new edition of Making Maps. John Pickles gives an insightful review of Rossetto and Lo Presti’s new Routledge Handbook of Cartographic Humanities calling it an “important contribution to furthering the hopes of Friday Harbor” (76) while Debbie Gibbons reviews Carroll’s new book on place-based narratives finding a “useful guidance for a first-time user of ArcGIS StoryMaps” (80). Gareth Baldrica-Franklin reviews a new entry in the “in 50 maps” series, this one focusing on the Great Lakes. Venturing further afield—into that wider tent that encompasses cartography writ large—Arden Benner reviews Cheshire’s The Library of Lost Maps: An Archive of a World in Progress finding “not so much a book documenting a miscellaneous bunch of maps” (81) but rather “a journey through almost two centuries of cartography, with something in it for everyone” (83). Finally, Zhaoxu Sui reviews Li’s Body Maps: Improvising Meridians and Nerves in Global Chinese Medicine a book on a topic I would not have considered cartographic on its face, but which reveals itself to be through a “challenging but fruitful” read (91).

This breadth (and depth) reflects the strength of our shared passion and the importance of Cartographic Perspectives, and NACIS, to it. Where else can you read about maps—in all their forms—with such precision, clarity, and care? On that note, and I promise it is my final one, I’d encourage you all to consider attending the NACIS Annual Meeting this (or any) year, and I urge you to share your own thoughts on maps with the broader community either at the conference or in our pages here. I look forward to it.

As always, your devoted editor,

Jim Thatcher