Thomas Ott

The Forest is a graphic novella told via twenty-five singular illustrations, without words, of which only Swiss artist Thomas Ott is capable. A young boy sneaks away from a family funeral and sinks into the forest depths, where he confronts man's greatest fear and must choose his path. Drawing with a technique called scratchboard, where a white surface is covered with a black layer and scratched away, Ott creates images out of negative space to harrowing effect. In Ott's hands, the medium becomes the perfect vessel for his eerie, horror-imbued morality tales. This gorgeous volume will be printed on heavy art paper with Pantone Black ink to best showcase every exquisite detail of Ott's virtuosic talent.

This book is the provisional result of more than 10 years of continued discussion with friends and colleagues from neighbouring disciplines. Although only a small minority ofthe millions of GIS users on this planet are geographers, it seems that somehow, geographers are a kind ofnatural contact persons for historians, archae- ologists, economists, social scientists or others who are looking for appropriate ways ofworking with spatial data. We received constant encouragements and many valuable suggestions from our colleagues. Particularly we wish to thank the members ofthe GIS Study Group of the German Association of Geography (AK GIS) as well as the participants of a workshop in June 2000 on "Mapping Europe's historic boundaries and borders" which was generously sponsored by the European Science Foundation. Among the individuals we owe special appreciation are Humphrey Southall and Ian Gregory (The Great Britain Historical GIS Programme, University ofPortsmouth), Michael Goerke (European University Institute, Florence), Konrad Pierau (Center for His- torical Social Research, University of Cologne), Bernhard Holfter (Forderverein Historische Grundkarte, Leipzig) and Stephan Riediger (Department of History, University of Mannheim).

This book is the provisional result of more than 10 years of continued discussion with friends and colleagues from neighbouring disciplines. Although only a small minority ofthe millions of GIS users on this planet are geographers, it seems that somehow, geographers are a kind ofnatural contact persons for historians, archae- ologists, economists, social scientists or others who are looking for appropriate ways ofworking with spatial data. We received constant encouragements and many valuable suggestions from our colleagues. Particularly we wish to thank the members ofthe GIS Study Group of the German Association of Geography (AK GIS) as well as the participants of a workshop in June 2000 on "Mapping Europe's historic boundaries and borders" which was generously sponsored by the European Science Foundation. Among the individuals we owe special appreciation are Humphrey Southall and Ian Gregory (The Great Britain Historical GIS Programme, University ofPortsmouth), Michael Goerke (European University Institute, Florence), Konrad Pierau (Center for His- torical Social Research, University of Cologne), Bernhard Holfter (Forderverein Historische Grundkarte, Leipzig) and Stephan Riediger (Department of History, University of Mannheim).