Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks

· Sold by Simon and Schuster
4.4
9 reviews
Ebook
288
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

Record-setting Jeopardy! champion and New York Times bestselling author of Planet Funny Ken Jennings explores the world of maps and map obsessives, “a literary gem” (The Atlantic).

Ken Jennings takes readers on a world tour of geogeeks from the London Map Fair to the bowels of the Library of Congress, from the prepubescent geniuses at the National Geographic Bee to the computer programmers at Google Earth. Each chapter delves into a different aspect of map culture: highpointing, geocaching, road atlas rallying, even the “unreal estate” charted on the maps of fiction and fantasy. Jennings also considers the ways in which cartography has shaped our history, suggesting that the impulse to make and read maps is as relevant today as it has ever been.

From the “Here be dragons” parchment maps of the Age of Discovery to the spinning globes of grade school to the postmodern revolution of digital maps and GPS, Maphead is filled with intriguing details, engaging anecdotes, and enlightening analysis. If you’re an inveterate map lover yourself—or even if you’re among the cartographically clueless who can get lost in a supermarket—let Ken Jennings be your guide to the strange world of mapheads.

Ratings and reviews

4.4
9 reviews
A Google user
January 22, 2012
I was given this book as a present, and I started reading it on a plane, with very little expectations. I was quite pleased to discover that the book was quite entertaining and full of interesting trivia, a perfect book to read while on a plane. Maphead is about geography, maps, and map wonks. It starts describing the history and role of maps in the ancient world, but soon it focuses on the lust for discovery and exploration of the unknown. It finishes speaking about today's explorers, stuck in an already charted world, trying to re-create the joy of discovery hiding artificial geo-caches or looking for arbitrary points in the map.
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A Google user
December 28, 2011
The breadth of this book is really its downfall. While it may be very interesting to someone who doesn't know much about maps and geography, it doesn't touch on anything really new and interesting. Furthermore the humor is terrible. I feel like this book is targeted towards 13 year olds.
1 person found this review helpful
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About the author

Ken Jennings is the New York Times bestselling author of Brainiac, Maphead, Because I Said So!, and Planet Funny. In 2020, he won the “Greatest of All Time” title on the quiz show Jeopardy! and in 2022, he succeeded Alex Trebek as a host of the show. He is living in Seattle during his mortal sojourn, but his posthumous whereabouts are still to be determined.

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