Look Out

Look Out: The Delight and Danger of Taking the Long View by Edward McPherson (2025) 280 pages

Edward McPherson's book touches on many subjects that intersect with his love of maps, from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, to maps drawn by artists traveling from town to town in the 1800s, to photos taken from airplanes and satellites. 

McPherson interviews an official at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, as well as former homeowners who lived in the footprint of the new facility for the NGA. He also discusses the Cahokia Mounds, which in 1250 was a very large settlement east of St. Louis that was abandoned without any obvious reason. There's also a discussion of the Civil War battle at Gettysburg, and how a mapmaker came onto the battlefield two days later, sketching out what had happened based on the bodies of men and horses still lying on the ground. 

Some of McPherson's strongest views come from cameras recording citizens going about their day-to-day activities, including in our own city (St. Louis). He is concerned about Project Maven, an AI endeavor that attempts to harness machine learning and computer vision to teach drones appropriate targets to hit in wartime. He is especially concerned that drones piloted by AI make far less accurate guesses about targets than those that are piloted by humans: 60% (or much less depending on the weather) versus 84%.

McPherson teaches creative writing at Washington University. His book is thoughtful and somewhat lyrical, and a bit difficult to describe, but well worth the read.

An Atlas of Countries That Don't Exist

An Atlas of Countries That Don't Exist: a Compendium of Fifty Unrecognized and Largely Unnoticed States / Nick Middleton, 232 pp.

Like other recent titles Atlas Obscura and  Atlas of Lost Cities, this title invites the reader to look beyond the lines drawn on a standard map to see all the things not depicted there.  In this case, we learn about expected spots such as Tibet and Taiwan, and lesser known disputed territories such as Balochistan and Transnistria.  Closer to home, we see the borders of the Republic of Lakotah, capital Porcupine, which most of us know as the Black Hills.  A reminder that map lines, like history, are drawn by those in power.

A very attractive and accessible volume from Chronicle Books.

Atlas of Lost Cities / Aude de Tocqueville, 142 pp.

From familiar ancient locales such as Pompeii and Teotihuacan, to Pripyat, outside Chernobyl, to bizarre modern developments gone wrong such as Sesena, Spain, abandoned in the wake of the crash of 2008, this was a pleasure.  I enjoyed De Tocqueville's text as she muses on the beauty and strangeness of abandoned places that were once full of life, but the stars here are the charming, fanciful, and evocative maps and drawings.  The color palette is both muted and strong.  This is one I'd like to own.