The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 92, July 1988 - April, 1989 Page: 194

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

As part of an effort to utilize and publicize this important collection
of maps and cartographic research materials, the editors of The Mapping
of the American Southwest, Charles C. Colley, former director of Special
Collections at the University of Texas at Arlington, and Dennis
Reinhartz, associate professor of history at UT Arlington, hosted a
symposium on this subject in 1983, bringing together four specialists to
share their research on the Southwest.
This volume contains the papers delivered by David Buisseret, "Span-
ish and French Mapping of the Gulf of Mexico in the Sixteenth
and Seventeenth Centuries"; Dennis Reinhartz, "Herman Moll, Geog-
rapher: An Early Eighteenth Century European View of the American
Southwest"; Robert Sidney Martin, "United States Army Mapping in
Texas, 1848-50"; and Judith A. Tyner, "Images of the Southwest in
Nineteenth Century American Atlases." As an appendix to the volume,
Reinhartz includes his own "Selected Cartobibliography of the Works
of Herman Moll Depicting the American Southwest," an impressive re-
sult of his research in both American and British libraries.
Each of the contributors is highly qualified, and their respective es-
says are well written and contain an abundance of footnotes document-
ing thorough research. The book itself is handsomely designed and
printed, with seven beautiful color plates. Although few scholars would
consistently agree with the selection of illustrations for a volume cover-
ing such a broad subject, some of the illustrations were unfortunate
choices. Plate 6, for example, reproduces an anonymous map showing
none of the American Southwest. It is also curious that few of the illus-
trations in the book were selected from the Cartographic History Li-
brary, on whose collections the symposium was designed to focus.
Because each of the essays was written to stand alone, an introduc-
tory essay giving an overview of the common subject matter would have
been helpful. In addition, scholars would have found the volume easier
to use if an index had been included.
On the whole the book makes a solid contribution in a field of grow-
ing interest, and it is hoped that this volume will be the first in a long
series. The editors deserve our thanks for exercising important leader-
ship in an area too long neglected in the study of southwestern history.
San Jacinto Museum of History J. C. MARTIN
Houston
Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water. By Marc
Reisner. (New York: Viking Press, 1986, Pp. viii+582. Introduc-
tion, photographs, acknowledgments, notes, bibliography, index.
$22.95.)

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