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.***The United States has always been plagued by regional rivalries. In the mid-19th century, they led to a violent civil war. In the mid-20th century, they led to some mildly amusing maps.America, it turns out, has a long tradition of cartographic cartoons like the one below. Playing with geographic perspective, they simultaneously mock and champion the parochial outlook of every region’s inhabitants. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the tradition can be traced back to New England. If Boston did not technically produce the first version of the joke, it definitely produced the most boring and most pretentious — complete with codfish, way too much text, and, somehow, Latin. The middle of the country, labelled “Western Prairies,” has been left blank, while Omaha ended up in California.Daniel Wallingford, Wallingford, Chicago, 1930, David Rumsey Historical Map CollectionThe map was drawn by Daniel Wallingford, a man who had a tugboat named after him as a child and never quite surpassed that achievement. Wallingford also drew “A New Yorker’s idea of the United States of America,” which was a little better than Boston, but quickly forgotten alongside Saul Steinberg’s far more famous take.A few years later, Ernest Dudley Chase offered a West Coast perspective. California is all oranges and sunshine while the rest of the country is beset by clouds, icicles, and demons. New England — complete with a moose and a few colleges — gets a nod as the place that “many Californians came from.” Traversing the country from west to east are trains of vegetables and disappointed passengers going