First, some fun and/or spectacular links, for enjoyment.

This American Life, Episode 110: Mapping (9/4/98) (thank Kayte for the link)
Art & Language: Maps and Models, by Thomas Dreher [auf Deutsch]
Map of the noise level of every outdoor space in Paris. Incredible. (thank Alex for the link)
Starbucks Avoidance Map, by Ian Dallas (thank Emily for the link)
GIS access to Hazardous Waste Sites, from the EPA (thank Chris for the link)
Logarithmic Map of the Universe (thank Louis for the link)
MapJunction.com has some amazing Boston mapping tools and data (thank Chris W. for the link)
The Laneways of Toronto, from Graeme Parry
Freight flows to, from, and within Massachusetts, from the USDOT (scroll down)
Amazing map of funds raised for the 2004 election (thank Chris for the link)
Maps and cartograms of the 2004 presidential election
Where is the beer?
All the ships in the ocean, from SailWX
All the airplanes in North America, or the super-great 24hr animation
Fed-Ex flight tracks into Memphis during a thunderstorm (music optional — thank Emily for the link)
World Google searches over a 24-hr period
What would happen if the ice caps melted?
What if they froze again?
Why is nothing in Boston open 24 hours a day?
The dead in Iraq, by Tim
The dead in San Francisco, by Paula Levine


And some lovely mappy arty things (an incomplete list).

Alighiero e Boetti
Layla Curtis
Fake is the new real
Morgan O'hara
Simon Patterson
Kathy Prendergast


Here are some free maps from the US government, posted for your convenience.

World Political Map (2.69mb PDF)
World Physical Map (143k JPG)
National Park Service Map (1032k PDF)


Some standard mapping links:

Maps of places in the news, from the University of Minnesota
US Governmental Maps at GeoData.gov (requires Internet Explorer)
US Census data from the Tiger mapping service
Other US Census mapping tools
The US 'National Atlas' from the USGS
Topographic Maps from TopoZone
A great page on map projections by Carlos Furuti
The Perry-Castañeda Map Collection from the University of Texas
Victorian-era maps of London from the Victorian Dictionary
High-Resolution maps from the GLOBE Ditigal Elevation Model from NOAA
LOTS of map collection links from the University of Minnesota
And LOTS of other links from maphistory.info


And some helpful sites for GIS data:

The North American Transportation Atlas
The Atlas of United States Mortality
Other medical GIS data sources, from Stanford
Map layers from the US National Atlas
Somewhat limited data from the Canadian Census
Great data from Massachusetts GIS
A pretty good GIS Primer from the Harvard Design School
Very useful GIS data links from Rice University


A few Google Earth layers:

Suicide in the continental US
World population density
(Almost) real-time global cloud cover (this one not made by me)


Finally, a few worthwhile books and articles:

History of Cartography and Historical Maps:
Anderson, Benedict. Chapter 10: "Census, Map, Museum." in Imagined Communities. 1983.
Cosgrove, Denis, ed. Mappings. 1999.
Cosgrove, Denis. “Ptolemy and Vitruvius: Spatial Representation in the Sixteenth-Century Texts and Commentaries.” in Picon and Ponte, eds., Architecture and the Sciences: Exchanging Metaphors. 2003.
Haglund, Karl. Inventing the Charles River. 2003.
Jacob, Christian. L’empire des cartes: approche théoretique de la cartographie à la travers l’histoire. 1992.
Krieger and Cobb, eds. Mapping Boston. 1999.
Monmonier, Mark. Air Apparent: How Meteorologists Learned to Map, Predict, and Dramatize Weather. 1999.
Palsky, Gilles. Des chiffres et des cartes: naissance et développement de la cartographie quantitative française au XIXe siècle. 1996.
Picon, Antoine. Le dessus des cartes: un atlas parisien. 1999.
Picon, Antoine. “Nineteenth-Century Urban Cartography and the Scientific Ideal: The Case of Paris.” in Osiris 18 (2003).
Robinson, Arthur Howard. Early Thematic Mapping in the History of Cartography. 1982.
Snyder, John P. Flattening the Earth: Two Thousand Years of Map Projections. 1993.

Map Collections of Interest:
The Agile Rabbit Book of Historical and Curious Maps (with CD-ROM). 2005.
Global Navigation System: Palais de Tokyo: Site de Création Contemporaine. 2003.
Harmon, Katharine, ed. You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination. 2004.

Cultural Geography and Cognitive Mapping:
Carney, George, ed. The Sounds of People and Places: A Geography of Folk and Popular Music. 3rd Edition. 1994.
Jameson, Fredric. "Cognitive Mapping." in Nelson and Grossberg, eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. 1988. pp. 347-358.
Lynch, Kevin. The Image of the City. 1960.
Pillsbury, Richard and John Florin. Atlas of American agriculture: The American Cornucopia. 1996.
Rooney, John, Wilbur Zelinsky, and Dean Louder, general eds. This Remarkable Continent: An Atlas of United States and Canadian Society and Cultures. 1982.
Rooney, John. Atlas of American Sport. 1992.
Zelinsky, Wilbur. The Cultural Geography of the United States. 1973.
Zelinsky, Wilbur. Exploring the Beloved Country: Geographic Forays into American Society and Culture. 1994.

Graphic Design:
Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic style. 1992.
Lawson, Alexander. Anatomy of a Typeface. 1990.
Tufte, Edward. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information, and Visual Explanations. 1983, 1990, 1997 (respectively).