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.***How would history change if America was backwards? It’s a question the country’s leading historians still refuse to answer. When you ask, they just back slowly away.So let me suggest three possibilities: Everything would be the same. Everything would be different. Everything would be the same in a totally different way. Option one is the most boring. Basically, the European conquest of the new world proceeds in starts and fits instead of fits and starts. Columbus lands in Baja, and a century or so later, the Pilgrims settle San Francisco. Things proceed more pleasantly at first. Colonists grow wine grapes instead of tobacco, and no one has to endure the Boston winter. Then there’s a bit of a delay, as the Rocky Mountains prove more impenetrable than the Appalachians. Davy Crockett encounters grizzlies instead of black bears and is eaten. But eventually, pioneers get through. The Oregon trail goes the other direction, and everyone is just a little disappointed when they get to New Jersey.Option two, by contrast, is what we’ve come to expect from alternate history. The Europeans show up a little later and dally a little longer on the wrong side of the Rockies. In the meantime, the spread of horses and firearms among the native tribes of the Midwest (which is still somehow the Midwest) facilitates faster centralization and state-building. Next thing you know, the Cherokee Nation and Comanche Empire have both signed defensive alliances with Russia, the Cold War is happening in Colorado, and no one cares because