This map brings your visual focus onto the oceans instead of the land and feels quite different from the Africa-centered Peters Map. This map will challenge students to think about the world, and USA-centrism, in a whole new way, providing an entree into many topics of discussion. This Pacific-centered version is color-coded as a physical relief map showing mountain ranges, different types of terrain, etc. It uses a proprietary technique of Oxford Cartographers known as 3-D hill-shading. Important features of the Peters Map: The Peters Map is an equal area map; the map shows all areas - whether countries, continents or oceans - according to their actual size. Accurate comparisons become possible; on the Peters Map all North-South lines run vertical on this map. Thus, geographic points can be seen in their precise directional relationship. The PETERS MAP Controversy - Summarized In 1994: Never before had a method of map projection generated such interest...as well as antagonism. In fact, the controversy was so widespread that cartographic historian, Jeremy Crampton (currently Associate Professor of Geography, University of Kentucky), documented it in his article titled Cartography s Defining Moment: The Peters Projection Controversy, 1974-1990, published in Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization (1994). Arno Peters tried to stay above the fray, and tended to avoid responding directly to his critics. He let his map speak for itself, which sold 53 million copies worldwide within 20 years of its initial publication, as well as earning a strong following of supporters among progressive social justice, faith-based, and philanthropic organizations. In Peters own words, ...public discussion was such as had not been known in the history of cartography. I attribute this to the fact that the debate over my map was in reality not a struggle about a projection as such but about a world picture. Clearly, ideology had entered the struggle. (from Arno Peters letter to Ward Kaiser. Quoted in A New View of the World, p. 2) ODTmaps Re-positioning of the Peters Map -- January 2001 In the late 1990s Friendship Press, the USA publisher of the map, faced financial challenges, a reflection of the difficulties in the publishing industry as a whole. ODTmaps took over publication of the Peters Map in early 2001. ODT was a pioneer in the use of the Peters map in corporate training programs related to management development, corporate culture change, leadership, diversity, and employee empowerment. ODT s primary educational mission was to encourage thinking outside the box and to stretch self-limiting thinking about personal power and influence. As the faith-based market for the Peters map waned, the corporate, association, and public school markets for the map expanded significantly. Further, a burgeoning new field began to emerge -- media literacy which found the Peters Map to be a poster child - a single image that could help deconstruct conventional world views and broaden the popular understanding about how framing a problem in a particular context led to a favored result. When ODTmaps took over publication of the Peters Map, there was still much hostility from the cartographic establishment, ODT undertook an effort to describe the map in a way quite different from the anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist message that Arno Peters had flaunted in the face of his critics inside the cartographic establishment. ODT also ratcheted back some of the dubious cartographic claims of a superior world map and a world map to supplant all other world maps. The 2001 Peters Map which ODT published had revamped thumbnail panels at the bottom, only two of which were devoted to highlighting the flaws of the Mercator projection (there were 7 thumbnail panels berating the Mercator on Arno Peters original map) and ODT softened the claims made on the explanatory panel published down the right side of the map. In the true tradition of other breakthrough maps (including the 1569 map by Gerardus Mercator) the Peters Map consciously posted its purpose on the face of the map. Arno Peters went further than previous cartographic innovators by prominently explaining the underlying value system on the face of the map. See Arno Peters explain his map, as well as brief comments by cartographic experts like Denis Wood on ODT s 30-minute documentary film free on YouTube. Facing a long history of antagonism from the cartographic establishment, ODT set about to mend fences and de-fang the Peters Map critics by positioning the Peters Map as one of many useful ways to see the world. --ODTmaps Map History On WEST WING - Feb 28, 2001 with a South-up Peters Map Aaron Sorkin s hit television show, The West Wing, featured the Peters Map in Season 2, Episode 16 - Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail. This broadcast has often been referred to as the best episode of West Wing to ever air. In the episode ther