People rely on reason to navigate the abstract world of human relations in the same way they rely on maps to traverse the physical world. This work offers a critique of the way human thought and action have become immersed in the rhetoric of cartography and how this cartographic reasoning allows the powerful to map out other people's lives.

People rely on reason to think about and navigate the abstract world of human relations in much the same way they rely on maps to study and traverse the physical world. Starting from that simple observation, renowned geographer Gunnar Olsson offers in "Abysmal" an astonishingly erudite critique of the way human thought and action have become deeply immersed in the rhetoric of cartography and how this cartographic reasoning allows the powerful to map out other people's lives. A spectacular reading of Western philosophy, religion, and mythology that draws on early maps and atlases; Plato, Kant, and Wittgenstein; Thomas Pynchon, Gilgamesh, and Marcel Duchamp; "Abysmal" is itself a minimalist guide to the terrain of Western culture. Olsson roams widely but always returns to the problems inherent in reason, to question the outdated assumptions and fixed ideas that thinking cartographically entails. A work of ambition, scope, and sharp wit, "Abysmal" will appeal to an eclectic audience - to geographers and cartographers, but also to anyone interested in the history of ideas, culture, and art.