Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection

Rare and Unusual Maps from the Library of Congress

A stirring trip through the history of the Nutmeg State illustrated by gloriously detailed maps from the Library of Congress. Features more than fifty full-color historical maps, informative and enlightening captions about each map's origins and its place in the evolution of state history, evocative essays by Connecticut writer Diana Ross McCain on how maps reflect the history, culture, and sensibilities of the state and its residents through time, and a foreword by renowned editor and author Vincent Virga describing the library's collection, the state's maps, and the place of cartography in shaping the American imagination.

Mapping States Through History is the first series to assemble -- in full color, state-by-state -- an in-depth collection of rare, historically significant maps of the cities, states, counties, towns, and events that make up each of America's fifty states. Produced in collaboration with the Library of Congress, it offers an extraordinary glimpse into the history of the United States through the maps and their narrative captions, as well as Vincent Virga's foreword and historical essays by local writers. Each map thus becomes a virtual time machine that tells us much about the places we live in today.

"A map is an image. It makes the world more real for us and uses signs to create an essential sense of place in our imagination...Like the movies, maps helped create our national identity...and this encyclopedic series of books aims to make manifest the changing social order that invented the United States." -- from the Foreword by Vincent Virga