NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: UNK
Date: 2014 Sep 1, 06:25 +0100
Andrew,
I’ve just read Jerry Brotton’s book “History of the world in Twelve maps.” Very detailed and well written, semi-academic but fascinating. I’ve asked for ”Great Maps” for my birthday. Thanks for the recommendation. The other good book I’ve read recently is Sextant by David Barrie. (now read twice, beautiful writing and very interesting).
Best wishes
Francis
From: NavList@fer3.com [mailto:NavList@fer3.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Nikitin
Sent: 31 August 2014 17:01
To: francisupchurch@gmail.com
Subject: [NavList] Great Maps (book)
I have got a new book, "Great Maps" by Jerry Brotton.
The book is about maps, as you can guess from its name. It is a "coffee table" style book, you can open it at any page and read just a page or two without loss of enjoyment.
There are about 60 maps. Each map has a few dedicated centerfolds, which shows the map as a whole, brief history of a map and why it is interesting, and several enlarged fragments which illustrate the point with comments and side notes. There is also a scale icon, which shows how big is a map relative to a human hand (or a whole human), which I found interesting.
The maps are from different time periods and different regions. Mapmakers of ancient and medieval Europe, Middle East, Far East, and New World are represented, all the way into today (last centerfold has a Google Earth screenshots).
There are navigational maps, "world view" maps, a star chart, maps of imaginary places and abstract maps.
There are a few classics, like Ptolemy "Geography" world map and John Snow cholera map but most of the maps were new to me.
I liked the book a lot.
