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Over the centuries, humans have conjured images--the stuff of dreams, convictions, and ardent desire--to describe our afterlife. The vision of heaven can appear as simple as a place among the stars or as complex as a universe filled with a multitude of busy souls. Positioned at the intersection of art, religion, and culture, this book sheds new light on human creativity in its portrayal of the afterlife. Beginning with prehistoric burial objects that help with one's heavenly needs, it travels through history to probe ancient texts, examines enigmatic carvings, dissects the meaning of paintings, and discusses contemporary perspectives in film and media. The author demonstrates that humans around the world have always had the capacity to confront the "final frontier" in spirited, hopeful, and beautiful ways.

Maps are inherently unnatural. Projecting three-dimensional realities onto two-dimensional surfaces, they are abstractions that capture someone’s idea of what matters within a particular place; they require selections and omissions. These very characteristics, however, give maps their importance for understanding how humans have interacted with the natural world, and give historical maps, especially, the power to provide rich insights into the relationship between humans and nature over time. That is just what is achieved in Mapping Nature across the Americas. Illustrated throughout, the essays in this book argue for greater analysis of historical maps in the field of environmental history, and for greater attention within the field of the history of cartography to the cultural constructions of nature contained within maps. This volume thus provides the first in-depth and interdisciplinary investigation of the relationship between maps and environmental knowledge in the Americas—including, for example, stories of indigenous cartography in Mexico, the allegorical presence of palm trees in maps of Argentina, the systemic mapping of US forests, and the scientific platting of Canada’s remote lands.