In this rich and fascinating history, Susan Schulten tells a story of Americans beginning to see the world around them, tracing U.S. attitudes toward world geography from the end of nineteenth-century exploration to the explosion of geographic interest before the dawn of the Cold War. Focusing her examination on four influential institutions--maps and atlases, the National Geographic Society, the American university, and public schools--Schulten provides an engaging study of geography, cartography, and their place in popular culture, politics, and education.