Geographies of Mars: Seeing and Knowing the Red Planet

One of the first maps of Mars, published by an Italian astronomer in 1877, with its pattern of canals, fueled belief in intelligent life forms on the distant red planet—a hope that continued into the 1960s. Although the Martian canals have long since been dismissed as a famous error in the history of science, K. Maria D. Lane argues that there was nothing accidental about these early interpretations. Indeed, she argues, the construction of Mars as an incomprehensibly complex and engineered world both reflected and challenged dominant geopolitical themes during a time of major cultural, intellectual, political, and economic transition in the Western world.

High Places: Cultural Geographies of Mountains, Ice and Science

High places--be they mountain peaks or the vast expanses of the polar latitudes--have always captured the human imagination. Inaccessible, extreme, they are commonly invested with awe and reverence, as places of physical challenge, intense experience. Increasingly, they are also treated as unique locations for science. High Places explores the fascinating geographies of these special environments, revealing how senses are challenged, objectivities exposed, cultural assumptions laid bare.