Maphead by Ken Jennings
I recently read Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks by former game show contestant Ken Jennings. The book covers a miscellany of topics related to maps and to the people who love them. Among the actual maps that Jennings mentions are these (click images to zoom):
Top left: a stick map from the Marshall Islands in the National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC (my photo); top right: the two Koreas at night (NASA image); bottom left: detail of the 1507 Waldseemüller map (Library of Congress); bottom right: Vermeer’s Officer and Laughing Girl
Jennings also includes several geographical anecdotes, including (of course) a reference to this:
Miss Teen South Carolina 2007 answers the question “Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can’t locate the U.S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?”
There are also chapters on map collecting, geocaching, and the National Geographic Bee:
Map resources referred to (in passing) in the book include:
- the USGS store and download facility (see also the historical map facility and the USGS national map viewer)
- the Library of Congress map collection
Overall, the book was fun, but a little light (the Wall Street Journal called it “an occasionally entertaining book that lacks a compass”). I’m giving it three stars. See Slate and The Atlantic for other reviews.
Maphead by Ken Jennings: 3 stars
