When the world's at stake,
go beyond the headlines.

This is the third installment of Mid-Afternoon Map, a cartographic perspective on current events, geopolitics, and history from the Caucasus to the Carolinas, for members only. Paying members can look forward to interesting takes on good maps and bad maps, beautiful maps and ugly ones — and bizarre maps whenever possible.Nothing brings the scale of a European war home to Americans like moving it to the Midwest. That, at least, is the idea behind this week’s maps, which superimpose the fronts of World War I and World War II onto the continental United States. As incredibly literalistic efforts to win sympathy for America’s allies, they seem at once sensible and slightly surreal. Sure, Rochester might be the Leningrad of America, but what the hell is the kaiser after in Dubuque anyways? The Battle Fronts of Europe, Stanford’s Geographical Establishment, 1917 or 1918The first map was printed by a British press sometime between America’s entry into the war in April 1917 and Russia’s exit in March 1918. “It is not always realised,” the text begins, “how extensive are the battle front which the allies are holding in Europe.” The passive voice is an impeccably polite touch: “Surely no one is suggesting that you, dear reader, failed to realise this basic geographic fact. But perhaps some of your less-informed fellow citizens, who we would certainly never call less-informed while they were helping us hold these battle fronts …” The text goes on to conclude that the Allies’ task “still remains a heavy one, and it will need every ounce of effort which they, and their American comrades, can put into the struggle to defeat the sinister aims of Prussian militarism.” While this newsletter has no truck with Prussian militarism or its sinister aims, I wonder about the map’s effectiveness. The Eastern Front, stretching most of