Author Rebecca Solnit was co-sponsored by the Stanford University Libraries and the Bill Lane Center for the American West as a visiting researcher and spent time with us during the Winter and Spring of 2013. During this time, she explored the library's newly acquired collection of historic maps that curiously depict California as an island off the West coast of North America. In a recent article she reports on her time here at Stanford in an article entitled  "An Island Is Anything Surrounded By Difference: Thoughts on Maps and History." In the article she refers to her earlier connection with California's maps when she worked on her atlas of San Francisco and reminisces about talking to David Rumsey who had first mentioned to her about Glen McLaughlin and his collection of Maps of California as an Island. Her article is well worth a read, stirs up your interest in this cartographic phenomenon, and whets the appetite for more. For more on her, visit her profile here and to view the collection please visit the collection available via the library catalog.