Illus.During those summer months, the river flows north into Tonle Sap Lake, which briefly becomes the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia.
The result is a delightful mix of lore and reportage that illuminates the longing to know where we are. He's also alive to the larger meaning of maps as they overlay knowledge, desire, and aspiration onto the mute reality of terrain. Jennings (Brainiac), who admits to being "a geography wonk" himself, is their bard, and his enthusiasm for everything from bizarre and off-color place names to the mystic intersection points of lines of latitude and longitude is infectious. They are a colorful lot: preteen National Geographic Bee contestants who spend seven hours a day studying atlases hobbyists intent on visiting every state's maximum elevation and Tolkienesque fantasists who condense whole imaginary civilizations into a map. But his main interest is the humans who pore over maps. Jeopardy! phenom Jennings (who recently returned to play against IBM's computer, Watson) surveys all manner of charts, from rudimentary animal maps ants, he notes, navigate by counting their paces, a fact discovered when entomologists had them walk on stilts to augmented reality maps that let you revise the world.
Maps reveal not just the lay of the land but the imagination of the beholder, according to this charming investigation of the allure of geography. 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. 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.įrom 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. 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. 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. 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).
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