Description
Book SynopsisWhen sanctions prohibited local use of racially, ethnically, and scatalogically offensive toponyms, names like Jap Valley, California, were erased from the national and cultural map forever. This title considers the efforts to computerize mapmaking, standardize geographic names, and respond to public concern over ethnically offensive appellations.
Trade Review"Engaging....A trove of giggle-inducing lore." - Publishers Weekly "[An] excellent book....[Mark Monmonier] is an able populariser of academic geography, and an expert guide to the bureaucratic, legal and political hierarchies that determine how places acquire, change and lose their names." - Economist "Fascinating....The book will interest anyone who has ever wondered how place names have come to be established by locals, and then come to endure on maps - at least until the advance of political correctness." - Susan Gole, Times Higher Education Supplement "An entertaining and enlightening excursion." - Michael Kenney, Boston Globe "Naming places has always been a political as well as a personal act, but Mark Monmonier's boyishly infectious history of...toponyms maps out the sexism, racism, and imperialism through which we have come to know our landscapes....Monmonier's book shows that maps are no more neutral than any other record of human construction." - Simon Reid-Henry, Times Literary Supplement"
