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

There’s been a great deal of discussion about the decline of Western civilization over the past few centuries. I suppose at some point it’s inevitable, but after hundreds of years of crying wolf, it’s increasingly difficult to get alarmed. Periods of intense civilizational self-confidence have consistently been followed by periods of agonizing self-doubt before the confidence returns restored and redoubled. You get a decade of Dada, then, a little later, D-Day.Since we seem to be going through a low spell right now, I thought it would help to look back at some maps that, to my mind, epitomize a bygone sense of mastery over reality itself. That the subject of the maps was entirely non-existent only makes the sense of nostalgia purer.The following two classroom charts, from 1870 and 1893 respectively, reflect an era when, among other things, people still thought it was possible to teach kids geography. But the pedagogical intent seems almost secondary to the elegant sense of order they convey. Geographical features exist side by side in hypothetical harmony, all accompanied by tidy labels.Bancroft Company, Bancroft’s pictorial chart of geographical definition, E.W. Smith, Philadelphia, Pa., 1870.On one side, a buoy guides you from a bay through a strait out into the ocean, where you can harpoon a couple of whales while steering clear of the volcano and water spouts. On the other side, you can venture out from a fortified town through a placid gulf with a rainbow beckoning in the distance. Then, in the foreground, there’s an island that inexplicably contains a solitary lighthouse and windmill. And two small figures admiring an American flag without ever descending into cinematic madness.Levi Walter Yaggy, Geographical Definitions Illustrated, C.F. Rassweiler & Co., Chicago, 1893Likewise, Levi Walter Yaggy’s map offers a vision of man and nature each in their proper place. Gunboats, steamboats, and