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.***Maps, marriage, and painfully drawn-out metaphors have existed since the beginning of time. But it was only in the salons of 17th-century France that someone first thought to combine all three. The result was Madeleine de Scudéry’s Carte du Tendre, an exhaustively detailed allegory of the land of love.Carte de Tendre, François Chauveau from Madeleine de Scudéry’s Clélie, 1654.The geography is simple but still perilous. Starting in the city of New Friendship, you can turn east through the towns of Negligence and Forgetfulness to the Lake of Indifference or veer west through Pride and Mischief to the Sea of Enmity. Alternatively, you can proceed through Kindness and Tenderness to the city of Esteem or travel through Great Wit, Beautiful Verse, and Punctuality to Gratitude upon Tenderness. Meanwhile, the quickest route is along the River of Mutual Inclination, but if you proceed too recklessly you soon reach the rocky shoals of the Sea of Danger.Over the next three centuries, illustrators would return repeatedly to the metaphoric matrimony map. In each new iteration, the style would evolve to keep pace with developments in actual cartography. But the basic premise would remain remarkably consistent.In 1748, Thomas Sayer published “A Map or Chart of the Road of Love and Harbour of Marriage.” Announcing himself to be “Hydrographer to his Majesty Hymen and Prince Cupid,” Sayer claimed his map was “laid down from the latest and best authorities.”Unsurprisingly, this British version takes a more maritime approach. Here, the optimistic couple must skirt Knaveland and avoid the islands