Kees Zandvliet, De wereld van de familie Blaeu, Zutphen, Walburg Pers, 2022, 384 pp. isbn 9789462499416.

The histories of the book, of cartography, and a nation all need its gods; yet this publication gives us back the mortal Blaeus, simply ‘tirelessly at work’ (in keeping with their printers’ mark, indefessus agendo), so that no miracles were needed for them to reach ‘cartographic Olympus’ in the 1660s (174). More broadly, Zandvliet’s book helps us rethink the role of the individual in the making of national pasts. Zandvliet also corroborates that the business of books proved a playground for new forms of female agency in the male-dominated Dutch Republic, which is the book’s second most important contribution to the field at large.