Product Details
The Map Book

The Map Book
From Walker & Company

List Price: $47.50
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Average customer review:
We love maps at Eguide.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #6948 in Books
  • Published on: 2005-11-15
  • Released on: 2005-11-15
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 360 pages

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

'Journey over all the universe in a map, without the expense and fatigue of traveling, without suffering the inconveniences of heat, cold, hunger, and thirst.' --Miguel de Cervantes, in Don Quixote
 
From the earliest of times, maps have fired our imaginations and helped us make sense of our world, from the global to the very local.  Head of Map Collections at the British Library, Peter Barber has here compiled an historic and lavish atlas, charting the progress of civilization as our knowledge of the world expanded.
 
Simply organized as a progression through time, The Map Book collects some 175 maps that span four millennia - from the famed prehistoric Bedolina (Italy) incision in rock from around 1500 B.C. to the most modern, digitally enhanced rendering.  Many of the maos are beautiful works of art in their own right.  From Europe to the Americas, Africa to Asia, north to south, there are maps of oceans and continents charted by heroic adventurers sailing into the unknown, as accounts spread of new discoveries, shadowy continents begin to appear n the margins of the world, often labeled 'unknown lands.'  Other maps had a more practical use: some demarcated national boundaries or individual plots of land; military plans depicted enemy positions; propaganda treatises showed one country or faction at an advantage over others.
 
So much history resides in each map--cultural, mythological, navigational--expressing the unlimited extent of human imagination.  This is captured in the accompanying texts--mini essays by leading map historians--that are as vivid and insightful as the maps themselves.  They make The Map Book as much a volume to be read as to be visually admired.

About the Author

Peter Barber trained as a diplomatic historian.  He has published extensively on medieval world maps, and on map use and the relationship between mapping and government in the early modern period.  In addition to being Head of Map Collections at the British Library, he is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Geographical Society, and an honorary editorial board member of Mapforum.

Customer Reviews

A beautiful and informative book5
"The Map Book" provides ample evidence of Mr. Barber's and his colleagues' knowledge and love of maps. The finely detailed reproductions of the historical maps alone would be worth the price the price of the book, but the addition of the well-informed and entertaining essays which accompany each map imbue the maps with greater meaning and provide a window into the thoughts, traditions, and motives of the mapmakers and those for whom the maps were intended. One could open this book at any page and become engrossed from the history and culture represented by each of the maps.

With the physical dimensions and glossy pages of a coffee table books, "The Map Book" goes beyond most of the genre by being not only pleasing to the eye, but stimulating to the mind as well. This book never fails to catch the attention of my guests and I never fail to be pleased at the undeserved compliments given to me from my simply having and displaying the book.

Absolutely worth the wait... finally arrived and it's stunning!5
This book just arrived in the mail yesterday! Wow! I never thought I would be saying this about ANY item that takes almost three months to arrive (we are in the 21st century are we not?), but it was worth the wait. The breadth of this book's coverage is amazing - the organization by year is really interesting - you can see the progression of maps (and the dozens upon dozens of invented uses of maps). Many of the maps featured in this book seem to be rare gems. And the paper and print quality are top-notch. Best of all, this book tries to educate while it's busy pleasing the eye, asking its readers thought-provoking questions (like showing a composite satellite image and asking "is this a map"?).

More than just a coffee table book, I am excited to finally own this visual feast! Very thought-provoking... being a geek is cool again! :-)

A snooze for map dabblers and coffee table browsers alike.2
The main downfall of The Map Book is...well, I'm going to list three downfalls, all of which snowballed to create a product appealing to nobody.

1. The research. It's all over the place. Did some professor who had a husband in the publishing industry get this idea pitched to her? "Hey, I know: A picture of a MAP on one side, and some text on the other! It could be gibberish text, it doesn't matter, no one will notice." All the professor heard was "gibberish" and "published book." Having worked in the dregs of both of these professions, I can easily see this happening. And I can easily see what happened next: Professor got bored and assigned a spread to each of her grad students, who in turn assigned a spread to their TAs, and before you know it NO ONE is editing this behemoth of a project or making sure it has any information in it, gripping or not.

2. The design is horrible. Having worked in that capacity as well, on a project similar to what I think this became, I'm guessing their graphic design intern quit after having a nervous breakdown. But dudes, it's the year 2000-whatever, and one of you should know that Burnt Sienna is not the new black and maybe could you bust out a ruler now and them.

3. I've had this book out on my coffee table for a couple of years, and not one poor soul has flipped through more than two or three pages. I don't even think this counts as a book.

In conclusion, it's a poor choice for someone who even shows the most interest in maps, cartography and history. May be good for repurposing into modern art, though.