Over the past four decades, the volumes published in the landmark History of Cartography series have both chronicled and encouraged scholarship about maps and mapping practices across time and space. As the current director of the project that has produced these volumes, Matthew H. Edney has a unique vantage point for understanding what “cartography” has come to mean and include.
In this book Edney disavows the term cartography, rejecting the notion that maps represent an undifferentiated category of objects for study. Rather than treating maps as a single, unified group, he argues, scholars need to take a processual approach that examines specific types of maps—sea charts versus thematic maps, for example—in the context of the unique circumstances of their production, circulation, and consumption. To illuminate this bold argument, Edney chronicles precisely how the ideal of cartography that has developed in the West since 1800 has gone astray. By exposing the flaws in this ideal, his book challenges everyone who studies maps and mapping practices to reexamine their approach to the topic. The study of cartography will never be the same.

《"非科学"的中国传统舆图:中国传统舆图绘制研究》内容有：《元和郡县图志》《太平寰宇记》和《元丰九域志》中的“四至八到”；明清方志中的“四至八到”；“制图六体”在中国地图绘制史中影响力的分析；对“计里画方”在中国地图绘制史中地位的重新评价；宋元方志中所记“四至八到”的性质等。