The Geographical Imagination in America, 1880-1950

What is the history of geography in the United States? How have Americans been taught to see the world around them? Susan Schulten addresses these questions by examining how ideas and images shaped popular understandings of world geography from 1880 to the 1950s. This was a critic al period in American History, it saw the US evolve from a relative isolationist nation into an international, economic superpower. Schulten examines four institutions of learning that produced some of the most influential sources of geographic knowledge in modern history: maps and atlases, the National Geographic Society, the American university and public schools. This book provides a history of geography and cartology and their place in popular culture, politics and education.