About the Author

Mark Monmonier is distinguished professor of geography at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the author of, among other titles, Spying with Maps and Rhumb Lines and Map Wars, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Reviews

"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"