Jennings spends some time telling the reader about the rarified world of map collectors and of the national geography competition entertained by high school students across the country. In autobiographical chapters he tells of his early interest in maps and considers the type of people who are drawn to maps (pardon the pun). I was pleasantly surprised with what I found. I approached Ken Jennings’ new book, Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks, without expectations.
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. He 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. Jennings takes listeners 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.
Maphead recounts his lifelong love affair with geography and explores why maps have always been so fascinating to him and to fellow enthusiasts everywhere. It comes as no surprise that, as a kid, Jeopardy! legend Ken Jennings slept with a bulky Hammond world atlas by his pillow every night.
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