Tuesday, March 29, 2011

We've persuaded Routledge to do a paperback version of our 2009 edited collection Rethinking Maps. This was only available as an *expensive* (over-priced!) hardback and, yet, despite the £90 price tag the small print run did sell out. The pb version should be out in May and cost about £25 - some details are here.

I also worked on them to do a decent cover, replacing the bland blue corporate default they employ on all books in this series. I wanted them to use a 'blank' map in homage to the illusory mapping in The Bellman's Speech of Lewis Carroll's famous poem The Hunting of the Snark. Shown left is Routledge's cover design and they kinda don't really get the concept behind the 'blank' and have plonked the main text in the midst of the map. ho-hum...

More details on the contents of the book - which are unchanged - can be found on my blog post from July 2009.

Monday, March 21, 2011

New books coming soon...
By unplanned happenstance it seems like I will have two new book out in a single month. April should see the publication of Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life (co-written with Rob Kitchin, published by MIT Press) and The Map Reader (co-edited with Chris Perkins and Rob Kitchin, published by Wiley-Blackwell). They have both taken a while in production to finish and be printed. They are both available for pre-ordering through your favourite bookshop.

We received some nice, supportive endorsements from significant academics for backcover of Code/Space:

* “Software is all around us. It is making new worlds of which we are often only faintly aware. So it is not just good to have this map of code/space, it is essential. All concerned citizens need to read it and think again about the world they inhabit.” Nigel Thrift, Vice-Chancellor, University of Warwick

* “This book represents a ‘William Gibson moment’ for the critical social sciences. Drawing upon the insights of geography, science and technology studies, and social and cultural theory, it offers an analytic encapsulation of how we should approach software and code when coming to terms with contemporary social ontology. It is a book written with a rare clarity, and it draws upon a rich set of empirical illustrations. Essential reading for all those concerned with how the social sciences should approach a world in which algorithmic power and processes of software sorting are coming to define ever more domains of everyday life.” Roger Burrows, Department of Sociology, University of York

* “Code/Space is like a travel guide to a new world—a world run on a hidden universe of computer code. With all aspects of contemporary life—from air travel to social networking, from online shopping to political violence—now orchestrated by obscure worlds of software, this dazzling book is the first to define the politics, sociology, and geography of this rapidly emerging world.” Stephen Graham, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University