Geography Beach Books

Maps feature prominently in many of Vermeer’s paintings, including this one, “Officer and Laughing Girl,” 1655.  This map of Holland and West Friesland (east is on top) was designed by Balthasar Florisz. van Berckenrode in 1620.  Van Berckenrode delivered twelve copies of it to the States General for 144 pounds.  Only one is in existence today, and it is from a later printing of the map from the copper plates, which Van Berckenrode sold to Willem Jansz. Blaeu, along with the rights to print the map, when he fell upon hard times.  Blaeu, who was the official cartographer of the Dutch East India Company,  is well-known today as one of the premier map-makers of his day, creating some of the most complete maps of the New World for their time.   

Geography Beach Books: No, it’s not an oxymoron!  Why can’t Geography books also be lazy-hazy-daisy summer reading by the pool, lake, ocean, mountains, park, wherever-you-happen-to-be during the glorious long days of summer?  No reason at all why not!

OK, so here are some of the things I’ve read recently (and not so recently) that I think are worthwhile, and also some books that I haven’t read but would like to read – they look interesting.  The ones with stars next to them are “Map Monkey’s picks.”  For the others, you’re on your own!  As I read any of them, I will update my reviews. 

These are my recommended Geography Reads for the Summer – my strange version of Beach Books!  BTW, Most of these books listed in the first section are available as paperbacks, so they're perfect for the beach, train, or airport! 

***Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World

Timothy Brook, Bloomsbury Press, 2008

NOTE FROM MAP MONKEY: OK, so “Geography” is not in the title of this book, but it is ALL ABOUT GEOGRAPHY!  This was one of my favorite books I read last year – and not just because I have an affinity for things Dutch!  Brook weaves together some amazing webs of global economic and cultural trade (not to mention networks of disease transmission, religion, and language!) and it is just terrifically entertaining.  And he teases out these relationships by picking apart the iconography of Vermeer’s paintings – very clever and fun. 

*The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape

James Kunstler, Free Press, 1994

NOTE FROM MAP MONKEY:  This is a very good read, and although it is from 17 years ago, still is extremely applicable today.  When this book was first published, it was quite controversial and very influential in urban geography/urban planning circles. 

*You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination

Katherine Harmon, Princeton, 2003

NOTE FROM MAP MONKEY:  This is another older publication, but a really nice read. 

**The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map that Gave America its Name

Toby Lester, Free Press, 2009

NOTE FROM MAP MONKEY: This is a very entertaining overview of cartographic history plus some little known tid-bits of geographical and cartographic trivia, disguised painlessly as a kind of a who-done-it, and very enjoyable. 

*The Fabric of America: How our Borders and Boundaries Shaped the Country and Forged our National Identity

Andro Linklater, author of “Measuring America,” another good book.  Walker and Company, 2007

NOTE FROM MAP MONKEY:  If you like American history, you will enjoy this book.  It is well-written, and really gives a lot of background of how our country got to be the way it is, and most of us don’t know squat about that, so, inform yourselves, and read this book!  And if you don’t think you like American history, you may have a change of heart after reading it. 

***Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer

Peter Turchi, Trinity University Press, 2007

NOTE FROM MAP MONKEY:  I discussed this book at length in a previous blog posting at http://geographer-at-large.blogspot.com/2011/02/maps-of-imagination.html

**The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the Way We Live

Danny Dorling, et al.

Thames and Hudson, 2010

NOTE FROM MAP MONKEY:  This book was reviewed by Gretchen Culp in my blog at

http://geographer-at-large.blogspot.com/2011/02/atlas-of-real-world-mapping-way-we-live.html

so check it out. 

**Strange Maps: An Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities

Frank Jacobs

Viking Studio, 2009

NOTE FROM MAP MONKEY:  Frank Jacobs may be no stranger to many of you – he is the author of one of the best map blogs around, and it has been around for many years.  Check out his Strange Maps blog at:  http://bigthink.com/blogs/strange-maps

This book, with beautiful reproductions of some obscure and well, strange, maps from over the centuries, is a distillation of some of his blog material.  It’s worth it to have the maps in hand rather than on screen, for a change. 

*A Voyage Long and Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America

Tony Horowitz

Henry Holt & Co., 2008

NOTE FROM MAP MONKEY: Tony Horowitz is the author of Blue Latitudes, another favorite of mine.  He writes in a very conversational and accessible style, and has done a masterful job in ferreting out all sorts of arcane knowledge about early American history and geography.  If you are one of those who thinks that American history begins and ends with Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 14 hundred and 92, and the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock more than 100 years later, this book will be a real treat, and introduce you to some of the wilder and more obscure aspects of our formative early history, in places that you may not have thought about having much to do with early America.  The book’s focus on non-Anglo events and geographies is also very refreshing. 

*Tuva or Bust! Richard Feynman’s Last Journey

Ralph Leighton

WW Norton, 2000

NOTE FROM MAP MONKEY: I picked this book up in Metsker's Map Store in Seattle last month, and it was quite a good read.  It is a funny and poignant look at the renowned physicist, Richard Feynman, and his obsession with trying to get to travel to a little-known country in central Asia called Tuva.  It is a Republic within the Federation of Russian States, and before that was an Autonomous Oblast in the USSR, but for one brief period in the 1920s-1930s, it was an independent nation, and apparently issued some of the most beautiful and unusual postage stamps in the world, which is how Feynman became interested in the place when he was a boy.  The book details the ins and outs of his decades-long struggle to go there. The Soviet Union kept Tuva completely closed to the outside world for over 50 years.  Tuva contains the geographical center of Asia, and its people practice a unique musical vocal form connected with animism, called "throat-singing," which produces several harmonic notes at once from the same person. Listen to a podcast about throat signing at  http://onpoint.wbur.org/2006/01/13/the-art-of-tuva-throat-singing  Also, see the video "The Quest For Tannu Tuva: Richard Feynman - The Last Journey of a Genius (1988)" at http://www.scholarspot.com/video/148/4414/Richard-Feynman-The-Last-Journey-Of-A-Genius-1988-
See recent blog posting for detailed review: http://geographer-at-large.blogspot.com/2011/05/tuva-or-bust-last-journey-of-genius.html 

Then there are also a few books I discussed in previous postings that I would definitely recommend as worthwhile reading:

Leo Africanus, by Amin Maalouf, see my write-up at http://geographer-at-large.blogspot.com/2011/04/leo-africanus-15th-century-geographer.html

The Past is a Foreign Country, by David Lowenthal (who was the keynote speaker at this year’s AAG meeting in Seattle) mentioned in: http://geographer-at-large.blogspot.com/2011/01/few-more-cool-websites-for-your-viewing.html

How the Other Half Lives, by Jacob Riis.  This is a classic that everyone interested in urban geography, history, planning, should read at some point, and was discussed in http://geographer-at-large.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-other-half-lives-tenement-life-in.html

For those interested in NYC in particular, check out all the NYC books that I enumerated in http://geographer-at-large.blogspot.com/2011/01/become-instant-new-york-city-expert.html

These are some titles that I would like to check out, time permitting, this summer.  I can’t vouch for any of them yet, so if you do read one, please send me your opinions. 

Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art

Peter Barber, British Library, 2010

NOTE FROM MAP MONKEY:  This book coordinates with the Magnificent Maps Exhibit that I wrote about in my blog posting http://geographer-at-large.blogspot.com/2011/01/magnificent-maps-snow-taxi-cabs-road.html

Maps: Finding Our Place in the World

James Akerman, University of Chicago Press, 2007

To the Ends of the Earth: 100 Maps That Changed the World

Jeremy Harwood, David and Charles, 2006

An Atlas of Radical Cartography

Avery Gordon, Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Press, 2008

Else/Where: Mapping — New Cartographies of Networks and Territories

Janet Abrams and Peter Hall, University of Minnesota Design Institute, 2006

Experimental Geography: Radical Approaches to Landscape, Cartography, and Urbanism

Nato Thompson, Melville House, 2009

Seeking Spatial Justice (Globalization and Community)

Edward Soja, University of Minnesota Press, 2010

The Point Is To Change It: Geographies of Hope and Survival in an Age of Crisis (Antipode Book Series), Noel Castree, Paul Chatterton, Nik Heynen, and Wendy Larner

Wiley-Blackwell, 2010

NOTE FROM MAP MONKEY:  I haven’t read this one, but it is definitely on my to-do list for the summer!  I’ve heard good things about it, and the all-star author list is impressive (well, in geography circles, anyway!). 

From Here to There: A Curious Collection from the Hand Drawn Map Association

Kris Harzinski, Princeton Architectural Press, 2009

New Worlds: Maps From the Age of Discovery

Ashley Baynton-Williams, Quercus, 2009

Mapping New York

Black Dog Publishing (editor), Black Dog Publishing, 2010

Atlas of the Transatlatic Slave Trade

David Eltis and David Richardson, Yale University Press, 2010

The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography

Katherine Harmon, Princeton Architectural Press, 2010
NOTE FROM MAP MONKEY: This is the new book by the author of You are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination, (see first section, above). 

Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline

Anthony Grafton and Daniel Rosenberg, Princeton Architectural Press, 2010

The Image of the World: 20 Centuries of World Maps

Peter Whitfield, British Library, 2010

NOTE FROM MAP MONKEY:  Whitfield also wrote “Newfound Lands: Maps in the History of Exploration,” a very excellent book, as well as “London: A Life in Maps,” and “Cities of the World: A History in Maps,” among others.  

Maps of the Imagination

"The Silver Dog With the Golden Tail - Will the Tail Wag the Dog, or the Dog Wag The Tail?"

Boston Globe, September 13, 1896. 

An 1896 map “as a political cartoon advocating for free and unlimited silver coinage – a departure from the gold standard – to lift the nation out of financial depression,” (Turchi, 2007: 124-125.)

Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer

Last Thursday evening, I attended a very intriguing panel discussion called “Starting From Here: Every Place Tells a Story,” organized by the French Institute / Alliance Française.  The event was announced by the following teaser:

“How are stories like maps, and maps like stories?  How do we understand and talk about place?  These are some of the questions the panelists—American writers Reif Larsen and Peter Turchi, French novelist Philippe Vasset, and French geographer Michel Lussault—will consider from the vantages of literature, psychology, and social science.” 

Now, what geographer, especially one who loves to write, could resist attending?  As the teaser mentioned, one of the panelists was Peter Turchi, the author of Maps of the Imagination: the Writer as Cartographer, and the ideas in his book were much discussed during the evening (and afterwards, I shamelessly asked him to autograph my rather untidy and dog-eared copy of the book, which he graciously obliged). 

When I first heard about the premise of his book, Maps of the Imagination, I thought it was a bit of a stretch, to try to shoehorn the two very distinct disciplines of cartography and writing together like that: comparing problems faced by writers (and their solutions) with problems that cartographers face, and to some degree, solve, in map making.  It seemed gimmicky to me: what could the two fields have in common, and what on earth could writers hope to learn by thinking about cartography? 

Once I started reading the book, I stopped worrying about all that.  First of all, I found reading the book terribly enjoyable; it was, as they say, a very pleasurable “read.”  Mr. Turchi’s writing style is sophisticated yet accessible, and he has managed to very succinctly distill some complicated cartographic principles and make it relevant to writers (and anyone else, really).  And considering that he is not a cartographer by training (although he does profess to a life-long love of maps), that is really saying something. 

Secondly, he manages to actually make a cogent argument that there are many similarities between cartography and writing, if not in the actual technical skills involved, then in the thought processes and decision-making that goes into each.  He very persuasively convinces us that writers actually might have something to LEARN from the principles of cartography. 

Thirdly, I was thoroughly transported by some of his literary examples.  Although I write all day long, I am in no way a trained writer, and am especially clueless about the creative writing process, as well as being generally ignorant of modes of literary criticism.  Since this was, for me, a novel way of thinking about the creative process, it was therefore quite interesting and eye-opening.  And some of his literary examples made me want to run out and buy the books he referenced in his examples. 

Fourthly, another major plus is that the book is chock-a-block with very nice (full-color) reproductions of all kinds of historic and unusual maps and map-like images.  That was unexpected!  19^th century Pony Express route maps, a 15^th century Ottoman Empire map of the Nile delta, a 16^th century Aztec map of a hacienda in Mexico, a 12^th century Spanish monk’s map commentary of the Apocalypse, to name just a few of the maps in the first two chapters. 

OK, so what are some of his arguments?  How is understanding cartography helpful to writing?  I will attempt to synopsize a couple of the main chapter topics, but I really just recommend reading the book, since my summaries are likely to be entirely inadequate.  

Maps are like stories – information unfolds – the mapmaker tells just the parts that s/he feels are relevant or important to our understanding of the story s/he wants to tell.  Maps and stories, both, are attempts to make sense of the world.  Map makers and writers are explorers, charting new territories, or else are acting as guides through territories familiar to them (but not necessarily familiar to the reader/viewer). 

Blank spots on the map, the parts unsaid, the parts unknown, were originally a device used in map-making when the map-maker literally didn’t know what was there.  But these blank spaces tend to draw in the viewer, and encourage them to use their imaginations.  Likewise, there are certain devices in fiction and poetry that serve the same purpose.  Blank spaces in literature can serve as points of transition, points of meditation, allowing the reader to discover things for herself.  Turchi explores the question of how much to leave in, and what to take out in order for the story to effectively capture the reader without being dull and predictable, or too cluttered with distracting detail.  How close does a writer have to hew to realistic portrayal in order for the reader to understand sufficiently, without the writer having to spell out every last detail?  Can readers “fill in the blanks?” 

The idea that no map is an objective representation of reality has been well-popularized in recent years by Mark Monmonier, Denis Wood, and others.  Maps, however, continue to command an unusual degree of authority, despite the fact that they are basically presenting a particular, and by necessity, a biased perspective of things.  The map-maker persuades us that the map is a “true” depiction of reality.  Similarly, reading a novel, short story, or poem also requires us to suspend disbelief and be persuaded by the author that what we are reading matters, and is true, although we are being asked to interpret a world created by the writer.  The first “lie” with maps, of course, is that on a flat piece of paper (or other media), what we are really looking at is the three-dimensional world.  An irregular oblate spheroid has been squashed flat, stretched, torn, compressed, and subject to shearing in various places, and reduced almost beyond recognition, but it still represents reality.  Likewise, a writer of fiction will try to convince us that these chicken scratches on a piece of paper are all we need to look at to create or re-create a world. 

Turchi brings in the matter of map projections and mapping conventions to further develop these analogies, and in the process cites many obscure, unusual, and also well-known examples throughout the book to illustrate his lines of reasoning.  In the board game “Risk,” for example, he points out how the Mercator projection places Europe at the center of the map, and minimizes the size of Africa and South America, to arrive at “a map of the planet distorted in the interest of good-natured world domination,” (p. 176).  And the board game “Monopoly,” being a highly stylized map of Atlantic City real estate, is “distorted in the interest of high rollers,” (p. 177).

He deconstructs the meaning in maps and then applies that deconstruction to writing.  Even for someone well-versed in cartographic history and the uses and mis-uses of maps, it is quite an interesting exposition, and Turchi offers a unique and fresh outlook on cartography that perhaps only a thoughtful non-geographer can do.    

At the event on Thursday evening, only one of the four panelists was an actual geographer, the other three being writers with a geographical bent.  What struck me (and undoubtedly others in the audience, including our own EES Geography Program’s Katie Gill, who mentioned this during the audience Q&A) was each of their strong recollections of their childhood fascination with maps, and the influence that this early study of maps had on their eventual lives and their writing.  As panel discussions go, it was quite entertaining; the moderator did a masterful job of putting out provocative questions to the four panelists.  As in every event like this, it just scratched the surface of some fascinating viewpoints, whetting the appetite for more. 

Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer, by Peter Turchi (2007, paperback).

Script Generator, by Philippe Vasset, (2005).  A novel about a mining geologist in Liberia who discovers part of a software manual for a program that computer-generates screenplays, novels, etc., and purports to be able to do away with the need for writers forever.

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, by Reif Larsen (2010, reprint).  A novel about 12-year old genius cartographer who undertakes an adventurous cross-country trip – complete with “his” maps and drawings. 

L’Homme Spatial (2007); and 

De la Lutte des Classes a la Lutte des Places, by Michel Lussault (2009).  (Class Struggle, Place [Location?] Struggle) presents Lussault’s original geographical approach and explains the importance of geography in social life.  Lussault is arguably the most important Geographer in France today (he is also the President of Lyons University), but he does not publish in English.