Springer
If you've followed my blogging, you know I love the constellations. It follows, therefore, that I also love star maps — old, new, it doesn't matter. And along with the maps themselves, I like their stories and those of the men who created them.
Lucky me. I just received Star Maps: History, Artistry, and Cartography by Nick Kanas (Springer, 2007). This is one thorough and highly illustrated book!
Kanas begins with a short chapter about constellation and cosmological maps, sky directions, and map projections. Chapter 2 deals with non-European cosmology and constellation development.
Chapters 3 through 9 form the book's main part, where Kanas introduces the reader to many celestial cartographers. Each has a "Life and Times" section and a "Celestial Maps" section. Individuals important in other areas may warrant another section between these two, mostly on books they wrote.
The star atlases Kanas describes in chapter 6 — "The ‘Big Four' of the Golden Age of pictorial star maps" — probably will be most familiar to readers. Curiously, Kanas relegates Julius Schiller's Coelum Stellatum Christianum (1627) to "derivative atlas" status, rather than as one of the "big five" atlases defined by other star atlas historians.
I especially liked chapter 9, "Mapping the stars in early America," for a different reason — I own several of the maps and books Kanas talks about in this chapter. He also lists a few of which I was unaware.
In chapter 10, "The transition to non-pictorial star maps," Kanas brings us up to the present, at least with printed maps. Maybe his next book will deal with computerized charts?
In addition to numerous black-and-white illustrations, three sections (totaling 76 pages) reproduces star maps in color. Several appendices and a glossary round out this terrific book. If you're interested in acquiring some of the magnificent maps Kanas describes, be sure to read Appendix A, "Collecting celestial maps and prints."