The Geographic Revolution in Early America: Maps, Literacy, and National Identity - Paperbackby Martin Br? ckner (Author) The rapid rise in popularity of maps and geography handbooks in the eighteenth century ushered in a new geographic literacy among nonelite Americans. In a pathbreaking and richly illustrated examination of this transformation, Martin Bruckner argues that geographic literacy as it was played out in popular literary genres written, for example, by William Byrd, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Royall Tyler, Charles