Dale Miquelon may be retiring from the department, but he is still breaking new ground historically. The latest issue of Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française (vol. 59, nos.1-2) features Dale's first French-language publication,"Les Pontchartrain se penchent sur leurs cartes de l'Amérique: les cartes et l'impérialisme, 1690-1712". The article works from the assumption that historical maps are not simply scientific reflections of geography, but are better understood as "constructions" that show us how past societies understood their world. The maps in play here, Dale shows, shed new light on the nature of French continental and imperialist ambitions for North America in the last years of Louis XIV.