Bookshelf GIS Cartography: A Guide to Effective Map Design By Gretchen N. Peterson This is first and foremost a practical book for GIS professionals who manage geospatial data, perform analyses on a daily basis, and must produce maps that truthfully portray information in an accessible and (hopefully) artful way. The author, like many readers of this book, came to her position with some design experience but no formal training in cartography. GIS Cartography: A Guide to Effective Map Design is not a how-to book in the classic sense and is not tied to a specific GIS software package. While the tone is relaxed and at times humorous, the author is serious when she stresses the importance of taking the time and making the effort to design better maps. The bulk of the book systematically explains cartographic conventions and explores strategies for solving specific mapmaking challenges as they relate to layout design, color, features, and media. Throughout, Peterson urges readers to carefully consider the map viewer whenever designing a map and to continue learning, observing, and experimenting. CRC Press, 2009, 246 pp., ISBN-13: 978-1420082135 Assessing the Accuracy of Remotely Sensed Data—Principles and Practices, Second Edition By Russell G. Congalton and Kass Green GIS has helped promote the use of maps for decision making. Consequently, assessing the accuracy of the remotely sensed data used in creating those maps has become more important. Assessing map accuracy deals with positional accuracy (is the feature located correctly?) and thematic accuracy (is the feature identified correctly?). Assessing the Accuracy of Remotely Sensed Data—Principles and Practices, Second Edition, which provides a complete guide for designing and conducting an accuracy assessment, deals with both types of accuracy. Originally published in 1999, this edition contains several new chapters. One chapter furnishes a complete presentation on assessing positional accuracy and its effect on thematic accuracy. New chapters were also added on the use of fuzzy accuracy and assessing accuracy for change detection maps. Finally, a case study on accuracy assessment for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) next-generation C-Cap Pilot project covers the design of the accuracy assessment, data collection, and analysis. The clear explanations of the development and use of primary positional accuracy standards are particularly useful. CRC Press, 2008,183 pp., ISBN-13: 9781420055122 Putting Crime in Its Place: Units of Analysis in Geographic Criminology Edited by David Weisburd, Wim Bernasco, and Gerben J. N. Bruinsma Although the first crime map, showing the distribution of crime in France, was published in 1829, the selection of the appropriate unit for this analysis has not been systematically addressed. The problem of choosing the level of geography for a study is not unique to the analysis of crime. More commonly referred to as the modifiable area unit problem (MAUP), it has two aspects: scale and aggregation. Geographically based crime studies most often suffer directly from the effects of the second aspect because only aggregated data is available. Choice of scale is indirectly affected because data and the geographic tools available have typically worked at national, provincial, or regional levels. The second section of this volume discusses more recent work showing the value of micro-level studies at the census block or street level. The third section supplies empirical examples of crime place studies. Contributors to this collection, who come from Europe, the United States, and Canada, were participants in a workshop on the unit of analysis for crime studies held in Leiden, the Netherlands, in 2006. Springer, 2009, 256 pp., ISBN: 978-0387096872 The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else By Hernando de Soto Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto posits that it is not lack of wealth or entrepreneurial spirit or some other cultural deficiency that has kept people outside the West from developing capitalism. It has been the lack of the foundation necessary to turn "dead" assets into "liquid" capital: a cadastral system and a network of laws that makes mortgages, common stock, and the rest of the infrastructure that underpins civil society. One of the keynote speakers at the 2009 Esri International User Conference, de Soto has been an advocate of creating cadastral systems in the developing world and organizing land information. His work, described in The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, has challenged perceptions of how democracies work. Basic Books, 2003, 288 pp., ISBN-13:978-0465016150 www.esri.com ArcUser Fall 2009 55