Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
New York : Viking Studio, 2009.
Description
Spanning many centuries, all continents and the realms of outer space and the imagination, this collection of 138 unique graphics combines beautiful full-colour illustrations with quirky statistics and smart social commentary. The result is a distinctive illustrated guide to the world. Brimming with trivia, deadpan humour and idiosyncratic lore, Strange Maps is a fascinating tour of all things weird and wonderful in the world of cartography.
Media reviews
As carriers of the latest scientific knowledge, maps also require leaps of imagination, and many (or most) have been crazily wrong. The historic and modern examples in Frank Jacobs’s engrossing anthology, several of which appeared originally on his popular blog (www.strangemaps.wordpress.com),
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include geographic blunders (California as an island), literary fantasies (Thomas More’s map of his Utopia), counterfactual propaganda (Europe, if the Nazis had triumphed) and a slew of other forms that blur the line between drawings and graphs, diagrams and photographs.
Mr. Jacobs demonstrates that almost anything can be plotted and traced — Neil Armstrong’s moon walk or a breakdown of the states where Ludacris boasts of bedding women in his rap song “Area Codes” — and thus in a most entertaining fashion, he has expanded our sense of what maps have been as well as what they can be. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member annbury
Terrific collection of -- just as it says -- strange maps, from the eponymous website. A few are deliberately offbeat, but most appear to be entirely serious in intent.. The mapped regions go from Manhattan to the largest moon Saturn, and the topics mapped from straight (sort of) geography to
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French kisses. Any map devotee will love this one, and it will also appeal to devotees of the unusual. Great Xmas gift for the right person. Show Less
LibraryThing member dieseltaylor
in a world where geography - in its plainest form the position of countries realtive to each other - is often not taught, this is a a blast of interesting air. incidental history, graphic art, and humour must surely make it more interesting to the general public!!!
LibraryThing member timtom
Jacobs' Strange Maps blog is a treasure trove for map lovers, and his book gives his eclectic collection full credit. Imaginary lands, cartographic misconceptions, political maps, parodies, geographic oddities and, well, simply 'strange' maps all find a place here. Discover the world's most
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intricate enclave system (sporting the only occurrence of a counter-counter-enclave known to man), explore how major religions envision a soul's path through life and beyond, learn why gerrymandering is called like that and shiver through Hitler's world domination maps all between the covers of this atlas of extremes. Show Less
LibraryThing member nhlsecord
Entertaining, imaginative and educational!
LibraryThing member setnahkt
Maps of mythical places (Oz, Utopia). Strange maps of real places – India with south at the top. Maps of geographically interesting places – the Kentucky bubble, Cooch-Behar, Baarle-Nassau and Baarle-Hertog. Unsettling maps – Europe if the Axis had won World War II. For that last, there are
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whole websites devoted to hypothetical maps of various Nazi victory scenarios; I don’t know if it’s because the possibility was scary or if there are swarms of neoNazis mourning their lost cause. Good coffee table book, might provoke some discussion, hopefully about the complexities of the Dutch-Belgian border rather than Nazis. Show Less
Language
Original publication date
2009
ISBN
9780142005255