The author uses an impressive accumulation of scholarly research--maps, documents, explorers' accounts--to trace the origin and development of the myth that California was an island. Highly readable and very clearly organized and written. Although I found her conclusion that the island myth comes from what people project onto California (from an ecopsychological standpoint, the myth might represent the imaginal presence of the landscape protecting itself) to be reductive, this is an invaluable resource for anyone researching early Californian cartography, especially as a history of errors.