Book Nook: Mapping America - The Incredible Story and Stunning Hand-Colored Maps and Engravings that Created the United States

I recently had a chance to review Mapping America - The Incredible Story and Stunning Hand-Colored Maps and Engravings that Created the United States. As someone who loves to travel and enjoys learning about history, this was an intriguing book to see.

There was a lot of information in the book that I had learned, at least on a surface level, in history classes that I took in school. However, I hadn't learned anything this in-depth in my previous classes. I found the book to be well-written - academic enough to be taken seriously, but not too stuffy and pretentious. I loved the choices of visuals to help illustrate the information being presented.

The book is written by renowned rare map collector Neal Asbury and National Geographic historian Jean-Pierre Isbouts and has 150 images of maps from historical time periods as far back as the Renaissance and even includes battle maps from the Civil War. It does paint a rosy-colored image of explorers throughout the book, but it's still an intriguing and interesting book to read for anyone who enjoys maps and exploration.

Neal Asbury is a global entrepreneur, chief executive of the Legacy Companies, and the host of the nationally syndicated weekly radio talk show Neal Asbury’s Made in America, produced by Radio America. He is a frequent guest on CNBC, Fox News, MSNBC, and BBC, has published more than two hundred articles on global trade issues, and is the author of Conscientious Equity: An American Entrepreneur’s Solutions to the World’s Greatest Problems. Asbury has received the President’s “EStar” Export Award and the Export Achievement Award from the U.S. Department of Commerce and was the 2008 recipient of the United States National Champion Exporter of the Year Award. He lives in Weston, Florida. 

Jean-Pierre Isbouts is a historian, doctoral professor at Fielding Graduate University, and the author of ten National Geographic books, including The Biblical World, In the Footsteps of Jesus, and The Story of Christianity, which have together sold nearly two million copies, as well as The Da Vinci Legacy and The Dalí Legacy. Dr. Isbouts has been on numerous radio and TV shows and is the host of the TV series In Search of Masterpieces. He has directed several programs for Disney, ABC, Hallmark, and the History Channel, working with actors such as Leonard Nimoy, Charlton Heston, Dick Van Dyke, and Morgan Freeman, and produced recordings with orchestras around the world. Dr. Isbouts lives in Santa Monica, California.