All Over the Map: A Cartographic Odyssey by Betsy Mason

All Over the Map: A Cartographic Odyssey Reviews

• 
  Eric Riggs

  This was fascinating! So many ways to understand maps from geography, geology, meteorology, and various sciences to demographics, crime statistics and even fantasy and science fiction, I was hooked from the first page. I would highly recommend!
• 
  Josh Stolarz

  Have you ever looked at a piece of art that really did nothing for you, but once you heard the story behind it you found yourself completed engrossed in examining every detail? This was an experience I had again and again as I read, "All Over the Map, A Cartographic Odyssey" by Betsy Mason and Greg Miller. To be fair, there was of course many maps that immediately captured my imagination the moment I looked at them, and the stories behind them added a whole new layer of depth to my appreciation. But while beautiful maps are contained in this book, the reason for which maps were included centers more around showcasing maps with an interesting story. I found this to be a refreshing angle which caused me to learn about some pretty interesting maps and the history behind their creation.
  
  When I began the book, I did not realize how appropriate the name of the book itself was for describing what I should expect. Normally, books of this kind that wish to showcase historical maps are organized with the maps of antiquity at the beginning, and modern digital maps in the end. This book though groups maps according to the message or purpose behind what the map was intended for. There are sections specifically dedicated to conflicts, economies, and science, while of course having more traditional maps like landscapes, cities, and waterways. Because they are organized this way, you really never know what to expect when you turn the page. While this is something I did enjoy about the book, it does have a bit of feeling of randomness to it which I could see being a problem for some people. If you can embrace it though for what it is, I think you can enjoy the "Odyssey" the authors want to take you on.
  
  As I mentioned in the beginning though, I frequently had the experience of turning the page and the first thing you do is look at the full-page print of the map being showcased. There were times I was honestly tempted to skip a few of these because I did not find them visually appealing at first glance. However, I quickly learned that it was worth taking the time to read the story behind the map before moving on. When you think of a "map", you probably wouldn't think of one based on the smells of a city, or one color-coded to show foot traffic in an area. Or even a map that showed only the waterways in the United States, or broke the country up into islands or lakes based on voting results from the most recent Presidential election. The book really showed how some people around the world have pushed the boundary on what we think of as a map and it honestly really got my imagination churning in regards to the way I draw my own maps.
  
  I want to be careful though so that I do not make it sound like this book is just filled with random and visually unappealing maps with a good story because there is a host of other maps that I found not only beautiful, but thoroughly enjoyed reading the story behind their creation as well. One of my main take-aways in fact, is that there are now several maps showcased in this book that I would really love to have high resolution prints of to hang in my office just for their amazing artistry. As I myself am more of a landscape cartographer, I particularly enjoyed viewing and reading about the intensive work by Bradford Washburn and his team to map the Grand Canyon. The amount of time and attention to detail by the Swiss cartographer Tibor Tóth in airbrushing the contours of the topography gave me a new level of appreciation for the art.
  
  One of the more philosophical things I took away from reading this book, is the fact that no map is entirely "accurate", and every one reveals something about the motivations of their creator. There are many instances in the stories behind these maps that reveal the distortion an artist has placed on their map in order to convey a certain idea or feeling. This may be a logistics issue of figuring out how to show skiing routes on a three-dimensional mountain, and the challenge of conveying that on a two-dimensional map or it may be motivated by religion and desiring to visually tell the story of Christ in the city of Jerusalem, rather than emphasizing an entirely accurate layout of the city. In either case, the creative behind the map needs to make certain decisions based on what they want their audience to know and feel.
  
  The cover of the book itself is beautifully designed and meshes several historical maps from the book into a modern, well-designed graphic. As I have professional experience in graphic design, this means a lot to me. After all, what is more embarrassing than trying to read a book in a public place that has a terrible cover? I have read many books with the dust-jacket removed just because of the poor cover design. But, this book does not have this problem and in fact is a perfect coffee table book to display.
  
  II am very glad to have this book as part of my collection and it is currently holding a place on my own coffee table. I see it as one I will open time and time again just to look at some of the maps and read some of the stories that go along with them. This is a great book for anyone who loves the art and the stories behind cartography.
• 
  Bonnie_blu

  This book is absolutely gorgeous! The artwork is stunning and draws the reader deeply into each map. The text is fascinating and contains interesting, unusual, and little known information. Obviously, this book was a work of love for the authors, and their passion for the work brings this beautiful book to life for the reader. The maps contained within are not relegated to the standard maps that a modern reader might imagine, but they cover a wide variety of material that can be mapped in a number of ways. This variety broadens our views of what a "map" is and all of the ways a "map" can add to our collective knowledge.
• 
  Lew

  WOW! What a great book on maps. I have always been fascinated by maps which led to a 37 year career as a Cartographer. Ms. Mason and Mr. Miller have done a wonderful job of collecting a wide sample of maps and including interesting facts and anecdotes about each map. The many maps are beautifully reproduced as one would expect from a book produced by National Geographic. I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest/love of maps and their place in history.
• 
  Bill Sleeman

  What a fantastic collection of maps and map lore. There is so much here that it is genuinely difficult to pick one area to celebrate! If you like maps, reading this will make you love maps; if you are already a map-head reading this book will be a party of geographic proportions. Well worth the time and effort to read and appreciate.
• 
  Deb

  I love maps--especially old maps with lots of character. I also adore books where the author includes a map--particularly if it is historical and a place that looks different today, or maps of fictional, made up worlds, so I immediately wanted to be on the TLC Book Tour for All Over the Map. It is a big, beautiful and utterly fascinating book featuring all kinds of unique maps that chart worlds both real and imagined. As it came late and I want to savor this book, I have not fully read it (yet) but I spent a pleasant few hours paging through it and finding it full of glorious pictures and interesting tidbits of history, geography, and cartography.
  
  The book is broken up into nine sections: Waterways, Cities, Conflict and Crisis, Landscapes, Economies, Science, Human Experiences, Worlds, and Art and Imagination. There are also sections for Further Reading (including resources and bibliographies) and a very detailed Index; both of which I appreciate. I was happy to find Parceling Out Paradise, about the ahupua'a, sections of land in Hawaii divided almost like a pie so that the owners would have a piece that stretched from the mountains through forests and farmlands to the sea. The 19th century maps (see the lower left two pictures in the collage below) are interesting and since my visitors almost always ask about the Ahupua'a signs that dot the roadways here, I can point them to this information. Maps of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake also pulled my immediate interest, as did the entire Conflict and Crisis maps of wars--especially the several WWII related maps. The fictional maps of the lands of Game of Thrones and the Death Star from Star Wars are fun, the maps made after the 2016 election showing the changed political landscape in the U.S. are telling, the maps of waterways and landscapes are stunning, and the 19th century maps showing the death toll in the U.K. from cholera are chilling. I could go on and on describing the many maps that grabbed my attention--there are just so many different kinds of cool maps in this book.
  
  I was lucky enough to receive a review copy of All Over the Map and once I make my way through it, I plan to keep it as a reference. I'm that geeky person who likes to look things up to learn more as I read, and while Google is handy, having big color maps and detailed stories and information is even better. I predict that this book will be a hot seller for the holidays as I think anyone picking it up to page through it will want one for themselves and want to get one for a map-loving or hard-to-buy-for friend. Highly recommended.
  
  You can see my review and a recipe inspired by the book here:
  https://kahakaikitchen.blogspot.com/2...
  
  Note: A review copy of "All Over the Map" was provided to me by the author and the publisher via TLC Book Tours. I was not compensated for this review and as always, my thoughts and opinions are my own.
• 
  Bill

  This is my 3rd book in a row like this, a hefty, thick, beautifully detailed and illustrated examination of something, in this case, maps. Some were fascinating, some were historically interesting, some were so minutely detailed or arcane in subject that I only glanced and paged on. The maps are grouped in kind by chapters and while Cities, Landscapes, and Worlds are to be expected, Conflicts and Crises, Human Experiences, and Art and Imagination provided some of the most informative and interesting. Standouts include: racial distribution in Chicago, Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion map of the world, the geology of the moon, and the ocean floor. But my favorite was the depiction of two different Americas (which placed atop each other would resemble the America we all know) detailing where the election results of 2016 went for Trump and where they went for Clinton. This is not the typical red vs blue states, but instead shows how much of America’s land voted Trump and how the dense population areas, the cities (isolated here so that they look like islands) went Clinton.
• 
  Jane Dugger

  A spectacular book of maps! I liked how the maps were sorted into categories (chapters): waterways, cities, landscapes, etc. It is a lovely collection of maps, something for every map lover.
  
  My Favorites:
  Charting the Mississippi's Many Paths
  The Waterways in the Contiguous United States
  Nicaragua Canal
  Boston's Soft Side (it's built on landfill much like San Francisco)
  Landform map of North Africa
  Atlantic Ocean Floor Map
  Wind & current Chart of North America
  2016 Presidential Election NYT map
  World of Wind
  Garden City Utopias
  
  (I obviously have a clear preference in maps.)
• 
  Agnes

  This is a fantastic collection of maps, from all across history and the globe, which show the versatility of cartography in illustrating everything from geographic features to human experiences. It took me the full 30-week checkout period from the library to get through it - probably a better book to own and periodically peruse, at least for me - but many of these are fascinating. A great collection.
• 
  Erin

  As someone who has loved maps since she could read, this book captured my attention out the gate. It sustained my interested throughout with the stories behind the cartography/cartographers. I learned quite a bit along the way and thought much deeper about what map makers have depicted over time (e.g., an agenda, deeply entrenched values/beliefs). A thought-provoking and enjoyable read!
• 
  Rhonda Hankins

  Extraordinary maps in a high quality publication. Really a treasure.
• 
  Karen

  Beautiful, informative, transporting maps carefully curated, described and reproduced.
• 
  Bailey

  Not something I would have picked out myself but there were some chapters that were really interesting to me. I did learn quite a bit.
• 
  Colleen

  A vast collection of beautiful, historical, humorous, and highly personal maps. Wonderful!
• 
  Rex

  The best general cartography book I've ever read.
• 
  Susan

  Although it has a lot of interesting stories, this is definitely for readers who like a weighty book full of beautiful, high-quality illustrations. I was particularly taken with Elizabeth Lutz’s map of the topography and “goddesses” of Venus.
  
• 
  Katie/Doing Dewey

  Summary: Fascinating and beautiful, this is an excellent example of a coffee table book worth closer scrutiny.
  
  This was a fantastic collection of maps, each with a story to tell. Many of the maps reminded me of my favorite parts of The Visual Atlas. They displayed data in a way that made me understand the world differently. They examined everything from poverty and disease to flow of trade goods to endangered animal habitats. Many were also works of art. It was really interesting to learn how, in some cases, artistic techniques to help people form an accurate mental picture were prioritized over accuracy in terms of scale, distance, or angles between objects.
  
  As someone living in the Bay Area, I found several maps particularly fascinating. I learned about ships buried under man made land masses to secure ownership of newly formed land in San Francisco. I also learned about the way this same land creates an earthquake hazard and about a particularly racist survey of Chinatown made in the 1880s. It will probably surprise no one that the section of maps related to science, the maps with implications for social justice, and the maps of fictional worlds were all favorites of mine.
  
  The writing in this book was substantive and well researched, although it could have been more engaging at times. Tiny font did not help. The contents were biased towards the US and Europe, but there were certainly maps from other parts of the world, including some of impressive age. I just used the appendix to find all the California maps and the old Aztec or Meztec map I was thinking of, so I have to mention how well organized this was. The themed sections brought a cohesiveness to a diverse collection that could easily have felt disjointed. I hardly need mention the quality of the construction of the book at this point. It was just as good as all the other National Geographic books I've reviewed. Overall, an extremely fun collection, well curated and well made.
  This review was originally posted on Doing Dewey
• 
  Richard

  The Inquiring Minds podcast had an enthusiastic interview with the authors:
  The Beauty and Utility of Maps: A Cartographic Odyssey.
  
  N.B.: this book includes a map of the Death Star, which apparently required extensive negotiations with LucasFilms.
• 
  Mills College Library

  526.09 M3984 2018