Instructive, amusing, colorful—pictorial maps have been used and admired since the first medieval cartographer put pen to paper depicting mountains and trees across countries, people and objects around margins, and sea monsters in oceans. More recent generations of pictorial map artists have continued that traditional mixture of whimsy and fact, combining cartographic elements with text and images and featuring bold and arresting designs, bright and cheerful colors, and lively detail. In the United States, the art form flourished from the 1920s through the 1970s, when thousands of innovative maps were mass-produced for use as advertisements and decorative objects—the golden age of American pictorial maps. Picturing America is the first book to showcase this vivid and popular genre of maps. Geographer Stephen J. Hornsby gathers together 158 delightful pictorial jewels, most drawn from the extensive collections of the Library of Congress. In his informative introduction, Hornsby outlines the development of the cartographic form, identifies several representative artists, describes the process of creating a pictorial map, and considers the significance of the form in the history of Western cartography. Organized into six thematic sections, Picturing America covers a vast swath of the pictorial map tradition during its golden age, ranging from “Maps to Amuse” to “Maps for War.” Hornsby has unearthed the most fascinating and visually striking maps the United States has to offer: Disney cartoon maps, college campus maps, kooky state tourism ads, World War II promotional posters, and many more. This remarkable, charming volume’s glorious full-color pictorial maps will be irresistible to any map lover or armchair traveler.

How can you find out about the lives of ancestors who were involved in the world of theater: on stage and on film, in the music halls and traveling shows, in the circus and in all sorts of other forms of public performance? Katharine Cockin’s handbook provides a fascinating introduction for readers searching for information about ancestors who had clearly defined roles in the world of the theater and performance as well as those who left only a few tantalizing clues behind. The wider history of public performance is outlined, from its earliest origins in church rituals and mystery plays through periods of censorship driven by campaigns on moral and religious grounds up to the modern world of stage and screen. Case studies, which are a special feature of the book, demonstrate how the relevant records and be identified and interpreted, and they prove how much revealing information they contain. Information on relevant archives, books, museums and websites make this an essential guide for anyone who is keen to explore the subject.

Modernists and the Theatre is the first study to examine how theories of modernism intersect with those of the theatre within the works, philosophies and literary lives of six key modernist writers. Drawing on a wealth of unfamiliar archive material and fresh readings of neglected documents, James Moran reveals how these literary figures interacted with the theatre through playwriting, by engaging in philosophical debates and participating in theatrical performances. Chapters assess W.B. Yeats's very earliest playwriting, Ezra Pound's onstage acting, the interconnections between James Joyce's and D.H. Lawrence's sense of drama, Eliot's thinking about theatre in Dublin, and the feminist politics of Virginia Woolf's small-scale theatrical experiments. While these writers valued coterie production and often made hostile comments about drama, this volume highlights the paradoxical fact that, despite their harsh words, the theatrically 'large-scale' also attracted each of these writers. The theatre event of 'restricted production' offered modernists a satisfying mode of sharing their work amongst the like-minded, and the book discloses a set of unfamiliar events of this sort that allowed these writers to act as agents of legitimation in granting cultural value. The book explores their engagements with popular drama, as well as the long-forgotten acting performances in which each of these writers personally participated. Moran uncovers how the playhouse became a key geographical space where the high-modernists could explore a tension that fascinated them, and which motivated much of their wider thinking and literary work.