More maps, fewer portraits

If you rewound history and let it play out again, the individuals would change; the geopolitics, less so.

And so I've always felt that history texts can never have enough maps. 

Especially given how cartographically challenged so many American students are.

So in place of a "Picturing History" portrait of Zebulon Pike

...why not a map showing--all at once--the Louisiana Purchase and the paths of the Lewis and Clark and the Pike Expeditions, complete with rivers and mountains. Something like:

This would seem a more relevant way to picture history than what exactly Pike may have looked like in his officer's uniform with his soldiers in the background.

Of course, students can always "look it up on the Internet," as I did (expending all of about two seconds). But, in the age of mapless navigation and shrinking cartographic literacy, how many will be inspired enough, and motivated enough, to bother?

Even when you do have maps, opportunities are missed. Notice here how the "Geography Skills" textbox completely obscures the Suez Canal: