Mid-Afternoon Map: The Eagle Spreads His Wings

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. Eagles are not very expressive animals. It’s a problem, I assume, for cartoonists forced to use them to convey the many complex moods of the American people. In the image below, Puck Magazine’s Fourth of July cover from 1904, the American eagle surveys his global possessions with a firm eye and