Book review of: Das Kosmoskop, Karten und ihre Benutzer in der Pflanzengeographie des 19. Jahrhunderts by Nils Güttler

Nils Güttler’s monograph on the history of geobotanical maps is an empirically rich and eloquent study. It builds on a dissertation written at the Humboldt University and the Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin. At the heart of Güttler’s analysis is the claim that our present-day understanding of vegetation maps as distinct epistemic tools in botany and ecology was significantly shaped by their “users” in the long nineteenth century.