"We may hope that Seegel's
Map Men, along with being a wonderful addition to the field of east central European history, will be an impetus for a shift in historical cartography and geography, forcing historians of Europe to move beyond the map itself to the people behind the maps. As Seegel writes, 'the disciplines of geography and cartography are not canonical, inherently democratic, or outside history itself.' It is necessary, then, to look not just at the maps, but at the people who created them and at the motivations these people had for creating their maps. Maps are fallible, just like the people behind them."-- "Canadian Slavonic Papers"
"In his remarkable
Map Men, Steven Seegel opens a new chapter of our comprehension of the production of maps, showing the social and psychological tensions and the personal intentions that preceded cartographic drawings."-- "Austrian History Yearbook"
"Libraries that focus on collecting materials related to international relations and diplomatic studies should add this book to their shelves. It is a fascinating, original biographical analysis of the transnational lives of five 'map men'."
-- "Western Association of Map Libraries"
"
Map Men makes a much-needed and timely intervention into the history of cartography and geography by placing the map-makers themselves front and center. This multifaceted book will appeal broadly to historians and historical geographers interested in nationalism, history of science and geography in East Central Europe, the role of transnational experts, and US relations with East Central Europe in the early twentieth century. Seegel presents a remarkable synthesis of the events of the early twentieth century anchored in individual lives and serves as a model for how historians might overcome national historiographies and nation-state borders to write more interconnected histories of East Central Europe."-- "Journal of East Central European Studies"
"A combination of biography and transnational history, Seegel's
Map Men offers new and important insight into the inner lives, friendships, and complex emotional landscapes that informed the work of five geographers who were instrumental to the making of modern East Central Europe. . . . Meticulously researched,
Map Men is a real achievement as a work of transnational history and collective biography, and it will undoubtedly make important contributions to a number of sub-fields in the history and geography of modern East Central Europe."-- "Hungarian Cultural Studies"
"In his brilliant new book, historian Seegel has shifted his focus from maps to the men who make them. . . . Seegel succeeds in making the reader 'more skeptical of national-heroic and literalist readings of lives and maps'. In this and other regards,
Map Men should be of great interest to the Polish or East Central European specialist--or for that reason, anyone interested in geographers or cartographers more generally."-- "H-Net"
"Seegel demonstrates an admirable passion for his subject, and
Map Men can be seen as a bold experiment that touches off many bright sparks."-- "H-SHERA"
"Seegel has written a remarkable work--one that is erudite, far-reaching, insightful, and focused on matters of enduring importance for the study of modern Europe. Maps are cold. By comparison, lives are much warmer. The great gift of this book is that it stirs up the placid world of maps so that we feel the lived, often momentous and deeply personal geographies that lay behind them. The life stories that intertwine here perfectly illustrate Seegel's overarching theme of how late nineteenth-century Central Europe's German-dominated
Wissenschaft culture was undone in the heat of twentieth-century war and revolution." -- "Willard Sunderland, University of Cincinnati"
