"Between 1650 and 1800, the social and intellectual changes that were sweeping Europe also transformed its mapmaking practices. Throughout the nations on the continent as well as their overseas territories, a new emphasis on geometrical principles gave rise to improved tools for measurement and mapping of the world, even as the rising power of the state enabled large-scale mapping and surveying projects. As illustrated in this comprehensive history, however, cartography encompasses a wide variety of processes for making, circulating, and using maps of different types, and the developments of the Enlightenment era affected these processes in different ways, depending on the type of map and the context of its production. The volume's 489 encyclopedia-style articles, contributed by an international cast of 207 scholars and experts, range from short biographical sketches of key individuals to multipart entries on such broad topics as "Geodetic Surveying," "Thematic Mapping," and "Map Collecting." Each entry includes bibliographical references, and the volume is illustrated with 954 images, all printed in full color"--

Matthew H. Edney is Osher Professor in the History of Cartography at the University of Southern Maine. He is the author of Cartography: The Ideal and Its History and Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843, both also published by the University of Chicago Press. Mary Sponberg Pedley​is assistant curator of maps at the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan. She is the author of The Commerce of Cartography: Making and Marketing Maps in Eighteenth-Century France and England, also published by the University of Chicago Press, and Bel et Utile: The Work of the Robert de Vaugondy Family of Mapmakers.