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- More Americans came into contact with maps during World War II than in any previous moment in American history. From the elaborate and innovative inserts in the National Geographic to the schematic and tactical pictures in newspapers, maps were everywhere. On September 1, 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland, and by the end of the day a map of Europe could not be bought anywhere in the United States. In fact, Rand McNally reported selling more maps and atlases of the European theaters in the first two weeks of September than in all the years since the armistice of 1918. Two years later, the attack on Pearl Harbor again sparked a demand for maps. Two of the largest commercial mapmakers reported their largest sales to date in 1941, and by early 1942 Newsweek had named Washington, D.C. "a city of maps," one where "it is now considered a faux pas to be caught without your Pacific arena."
user-inactivated · 3623 days ago · link ·
Why? Because he zoomed in? None of his maps seem grossly inaccurate to me at all. What a fun read, though.Harrison's critics claimed his work was more propagandistic and pictorial than scientific and reliable, governed by caricatures of the globe rather than fidelity to latitude and longitude.
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I don't think the criticisms are because they are inaccurate. My guess is that his 'maps' were not scientific enough. They appear to be photos taken from space (even though they are still projections, a photo taken from an infinite distance) instead of proper cartographically correct maps, which never pretend to be anything but a map. That, or they were just jealous of his skills. Who wouldn't be?