On June 10, 2025, Esri Press is releasing my book. It’s called, perhaps inevitably, “Telling Stories with Maps” — inevitably because that’s been my primary professional preoccupation for the better part of four decades, first at the National Geographic Society and more recently at Esri.
The book, whose full title is “Telling Stories with Maps: Lessons from a Lifetime of Creating Place-based Narratives,” is a somewhat unconventional mix of instructional guide and personal memoir. Much of the latter has to do with the birth of the digital age and the profound impacts it has had on the production and consumption of maps and stories — and how maps in combination with multimedia content provide powerful storytelling opportunities. Having weathered the transition from analog to digital, and having helped create countless maps and place-based narratives, I’ve learned a few lessons that I hope you might find useful.
Among the lessons I’ve learned, and that I explore in the book:
• Some of the ancient rules of mapmaking and storytelling still apply in the digital era, but with the new age come new rules — and new opportunities — that make our work more interesting, and our tools more powerful, than ever.
• Maps add depth, context, and insight to storytelling. In digital media, the information density of maps provides an ideal complement to the immediacy and visceral impact of images.
• Spatial data represents a mother lode of storytelling potential — and we mapmakers and communicators have an obligation to mine that lode and tell those stories, not just to fellow specialists but to everyone.
• Working for Esri and Nat Geo has been a rare privilege, and doing so has immeasurably magnified my impact. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to both organizations.
I’ve organized “Telling Stories with Maps” into eight chapters, plus a foreword and an epilogue. If you’re a habitual reader of the ArcGIS blog, some of the text may seem familiar; that’s because a few of the chapters made their initial appearance as blog posts. Here’s an outline of the book:
Chapter 1
“Why Stories Matter” considers how storytelling is fundamental to our humanity and attempts to put the tremendous variety of place-based topics and approaches embraced by multimedia storytellers into a handful of categories.
Chapter 2
“Why Maps Matter” contemplates how maps help us tackle the who, what, when, where, why, and how — questions at the heart of understanding a topic or issue. It also compares and contrasts how words, images, and maps help facilitate answering the “five W’s and one H.”
Chapter 3
“Maps and Minds” considers the deep connection between maps and memory. It explores the structures and functions within our brains that enable us to navigate the world and how exposure to maps and geography can change how we think.
Chapter 4
“From Analog to Digital” explains how cartography and location-based storytelling have changed during the advent of the digital age and how my colleagues and I developed storytelling approaches that were suited to the new medium of the web while continuing to honor the centuries-old conventions of cartography.
Chapter 5
“The Journey to Storytelling” recounts how my collaborators and I employed and refined storytelling techniques to create printed wall maps and atlas plates, and more recently to develop multimedia stories presented within the confines of small screens but liberated by a new ability to employ motion and interactivity.
Chapter 6
“Maps in Dramatic Roles” categorizes the various functions that maps play in narrative contexts, from bit parts — simple locator maps — to stars of the show — maps that pan, zoom, and morph to interpret complex spatial data.
Chapter 7
“Nine Steps to Great Storytelling” provides advice on how to approach and create effective stories, based on my team’s long experience in producing place-based narratives.
Chapter 8
“Plan, Produce, Polish, Publish” takes readers through the features and functions of ArcGIS StoryMaps, Esri’s storytelling platform, offering advice and opinions along the way.
Exemplary Stories
Between chapters are visual summaries of more than a dozen exemplary stories, some developed by myself and my team, others created by our growing community of storytellers.
The book is profusely illustrated, and is designed to encourage casual browsing. Within the book are descriptions of many multimedia narratives, all of which you can explore in fully interactive form in this companion online collection.
As an author, I admit to being a bit worried that I’ve omitted important collaborators and colleagues, or garbled my anecdotes due to a flawed memory. I could have described countless additional place-based narratives and recollected scores of rewarding experiences with people and organizations throughout my career. I apologize for any omissions and errors.
Why did I write this book? I had several motives, among them:
• I’ve had a joyful and rewarding career, and it’s been selfish fun to reminisce about it.
• I’m hopeful that you’ll find a few useful tips, and that you might be inspired by the stories described in the book to weave your own place-based tales.
• Our exquisite planet needs our urgent attention. Earth is resilient and will long outlive our brief dominance, but we as humans have the power, and the responsibility, to care for our home planet in a way that protects its biodiversity and maintains its sustainability. We need to tell the story of the Earth.
• And we need to fight against a rising tide of disinformation and willful ignorance. Maps and location-based stories are a force for truth, insight, and understanding. We need to apply that force.
I’ve been fortunate to rub elbows for a half-century with overlapping communities of GIS professionals, mapmakers, storytellers, and geographers. These communities are densely populated with brilliant, passionate, and creative people, with whom it has been a privilege and a huge pleasure to collaborate. Thank you!
Visit Esri Press for more information about the book and how to purchase it.
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