Welcome to Mid-Afternoon Map, our exclusive members-only newsletter that provides a cartographic perspective on current events, geopolitics, and history from the Caucasus to the Carolinas. Subscribers can look forward to interesting takes on good maps and bad maps, beautiful maps and ugly ones — and bizarre maps whenever possible. *** There used to be a Near East. It stretched from the Balkans across Anatolia, down through the Levant and possibly into Egypt. Then, during the course of the 20th century, it was gradually supplemented by the Middle East, an overlapping but distinct region stretching from Iran through Egypt and possibly including Turkey. As