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

Welcome to Mid-Afternoon Map, our exclusive members-only newsletter that provides a cartographic perspective on current events, geopolitics, and history from the Caucasus to the Carolinas. Subscribers can look forward to interesting takes on good maps and bad maps, beautiful maps and ugly ones — and bizarre maps whenever possible.“It was only during oyster season that Haynie Bradshaw fell from grace.”In my experience, when the docent of a local history museum asks if you want a guided tour, it really doesn’t matter what you say. You’re getting one. And apparently in my experience you then find yourself, a week later, reading a historical account of the Oyster Wars and wondering about the theological convictions of oyster poachers.During the 1870s, the Maryland state government commissioned an “Oyster Navy” to crack down on fishermen who were illegally dredging for oysters in locations reserved for tonging. Armed in some cases with surplus Civil War cannons, these police boats fought a series of running battles with local watermen through the rivers and inlets of the Chesapeake. The oyster pirates responded with defensive and offensive measures: They covered their sails with mud to avoid detection and built steel armor to ward off bullets. They also launched ambushes and at one point attempted the assassination of a police captain. Though violence subsided in the early 20th century, the last death occurred in 1959, when police fired on a fleeing boat in the Potomac.With chapters like “Hell on the Half-Shell,” John Wennersten’s The Oyster Wars of Chesapeake Bay gives the impression that the entire history of the United States could be effectively and dramatically told through the oyster. If anything, the absurd specificity of the topic helps foster a persistent moral ambiguity that is absent from more ideological accounts of the country’s past.In the tradition of so many