The Copper Empire, volume 1, by Mike Forgrave: a review

Roughly fifty maps of towns and mining locations on the Keweenaw peninsula, with only a minimal amount of text. These are sort of idealized maps, actually, showing each town/mine’s main features but not tied to specific dates. So (according to the author/mapmaker) some of the maps include structures which not only are no longer there but which never coexisted on the specific site. The result is that each map locates both current (2009) buildings and construction which was dismantled 70 years ago.

That sounds worse than it is. This book is a reconstruction for someone who wishes to know where, for instance, the Mohawk mine’s paint house was, and will use now-existing roads and buildings as routings and landmarks. It’s also useful for folks reading about specific locations and trying to understand the geography of a book’s description.

A good book, although I suspect with a fairly limited potential audience. It’s available here in both paper and ebook formats. The ebook is PDF and is not suitable for e-ink readers but works just fine in my tablet.


This short review was originally published on LibraryThing.

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