University of Chicago Press Charting Louisiana: Five Hundred Years of Maps

Winner of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities 2004 Humanities Book of the Year Award, the Louisiana Library Association's 2004 Louisiana Literary Award, and the Gulf South Historical Association's 2004 Best Book on the Gulf South Award. The name "Louisiana" has always held a special allure, calling forth images of a rich colonial past, a land filled with exotic flora and fauna, and a territory that once extended across stretches of North America. Tracing the discovery, colonization, and development of the region, Charting Louisiana: Five Hundred Years of Maps relates the epic history of Louisiana. From the earliest appearance of the Gulf Coast on a 16th-century woodcut to a color-enhanced satellite view of the state, the atlas presents an extraordinary gathering of 193 manuscripts and printed maps (all full-color plates), many of them rarely made available to the public. Six essays lead the reader across the historical panorama of Louisiana as found in its cartography.