Mid-Afternoon Map: The Empire of Atlantis

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. Editors, like hungover readers, appreciate a clear thesis statement. So I was particularly pleased this morning to open Ignatius Donnelly’s 1882 book Atlantis: The Antidiluvian World and discover 14 of them. In Chapter One, helpfully titled “The Purpose of This Book,” Donnelly explains that he will “attempt to demonstrate several distinct