Earth Map

Review by Charles Pinney:

If you've ever been one flipping to the maps in "The Hobbit", "The Lord of the Rings" , or "The Silmarillion" to see where the action is taking place, then this book is for you.Karen Wynn Fonstad has done a remarkable job of mapping Middle-earth. The atlas is broken down into various sections, each easy to navigate to find what you're looking for.The First Age section is perfect for readers of "The Silmarillion", all the important places are mapped along with ample notes and observations.The Second Age deals with the fall of Numenor, a worthy companion to those reading "Unfinished Tales".The majority of the book deals with the Third Age. This is where "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" takes place. There are maps showing the kingdoms of the Dunedain as well as the migration of the dwarves and the hobbits.There are regional maps detailing the Shire, the Misty Mountains, Eriador, and Mordor. Two lengthy sections are devoted to the Hobbit and LotR, showing all the key places in the books. Fantastic maps to look over again and again.Towards the end of the book are included the thematic maps. Very interesting. These show the landforms, climate, vegetation, population and languages spoken.Overall, if you're remotely interesting in learning more about Middle-earth, or you're just interested in great maps, pick this up. Enjoy.

Review by :

The Atlas of Middle-Earth is an excellent work of geographic reasoning in the great tradition of Eratostenes. The attention to detail, the realism in the drawings, and the breadth of topics in this book are difficult to measure. I am a professional geographer, and I understand how labor-intensive the completion of this book must have been. Literally thousands of decisions made by Mrs. Fonstad had to fit with Tolkien's descriptions and intentions. That Tolkien's descriptions can stand up to such scrutiny of accuracy and internal consistency is a testament to Tolkien's magic (many authors' designed worlds do not).I also wish to dispell a misconception by an earlier reviewer. The review by Linards Ticmanis from Germany is in error about Mrs. Fonstad's portrayal of the world maps. He suggested that her maps show a world "only half as large as the real earth" and that Tolkien has designed Arda to be Earth (although Tolkien denied that Middle-Earth was Europe in The Lost Road, p. 25). However, the radius of the planet can be calculated from her maps by placing an orthographic projection diagram with lines of latitude and longitude on top of her maps (her world maps are orthographic projections). When a degree of longitude or latitude is compared to its ground distance (supplied by reading Tolkien), it is quite easy to calculate the radius of the planet, approximately 4200 miles (6770 km). This compares to 3963 miles (6378 km) radius for the earth. These two measurements are very similar, and the idea that Mrs. Fonstad's maps show a world that is "only half as large as the real earth" is in error. In any case, the Atlas of Middle-Earth is about as "Tolkien Purist" as you can get; and this adds to its value immensely.

Review by Bruce R. Gilson:

About two months ago, I reviewed "Understanding Map Projections" by Melita Kennedy and Steve Kopp. While in certain minor ways this book falls short of Kennedy and Kopp's book, it is generally head and shoulders above it. And while it is true that Snyder's book is almost twice the price of Kennedy and Kopp's book, it is worth it. Other books of comparable value cost much more.The only negative thing I really have to say about Snyder's book is that he tries to do two different things in it. This book is both a history and a survey of map projections, and what is appropriate for a history may not be best for a survey. In particular, it means that Snyder covers the various projections not in a sensible order (grouping similar types together), but chronologically. Projections popularized, say, in the 19th century are all covered in the same section.I prefer the organization of Kennedy and Kopp's book, and I think the use of color in that book makes for a more attractive book. But my primary rating of a book on map projections is going to be based on three criteria: (1) Does it cover a large variety of different projections? (2) Does it give illustrations of what they look like? and (3) Does it give formulas or other information by which one can actually construct maps on the projections listed? This book ranks much higher than Kennedy and Kopp's on two of these three criteria (the first and last), and does not fall very far short of it on the remnaining one.Over a hundred projections (actually, close to twice that many) are treated in this book, from familiar ones to novelty projections that never will be used in a serious atlas. And a large proportion of them are illustrated (though not all, and the ones that are do not use color as in the Kennedy & Kopp book) and either have the formulas for plotting them or are described in terms equivalent to giving formulas (By contrast the Kennedy-Kopp book has almost no formulas, and the descriptions do not allow you to produce them). If you don't want to spend over , this is the one map projection book to buy.

Review by :

True to its title, here is a fascinating and very readable historical survey of mankind's struggle to draw a spherical planet as a flat map in a useful way - a problem simply stated, yet never perfectly solvable.Not many projection formulas, but plenty of illustrations, including timelines and original historic maps.The huge bibliography only hints at the enourmous amount of research and cross-referencing provided by this work. From the viewpoint of map projections, this is *the* ultimate history book.

Review by Shaun W. Taylor:

While I enjoyed the author's clear writing style, and I was pleased to see that the level of detail and explanation given in each chapter is consistent, I did not find the book's content to be particularly valuable.

The book is organized very well, and it reads like a Google Maps tutorial, rather than a hacks book. The flow from chapter to chapter is similar to the Maps API online documentation, which makes following along with Google's documentation a breeze while reading the book.

The first 100 pages were introductory, describing Google Local, the Maps API, ways to store and share information, and so on in very general terms. This puts all users on equal footing, but it seemed odd to see so much basic information in a book about hacking Google Maps.

One thing that shocked me, especially given the approach taken in the first 100 pages, was to see all of the examples written in Perl. If the introductory lessons are needed by anyone, chances are that programming / scripting is new to him/her, and I don't see Perl as the appropriate language to learn at that point.

Version 1 of the API is used throughout the book, but version 2 was released in April 2006. Version 2 is largely backwards compatible, but Google has asked everyone to move to version 2, saying that v1 support can be turned off at any point. This doesn't take away from the value of the lessons, but it does add some overhead. I consulted Google's documentation and adjusted all of the books examples for the api changes as I read.

Another thing that particularly surprised me was the mention of using scraping techniques to extract geocoding data, without mentioning the drawbacks to doing so. Personally, I avoid scraping like the plague. There's no better way to break an app than to scrape its data. Geocoding is part of the v2 api, btw.

To summarize, the book is a clearly laid out introduction to using the Google Maps API, and it is written well, but I wouldn't recommend it to a friend. For an introduction to maps, I would consult Google's much-improved online documentation, and O'Reilly's "Google Maps Hacks" is a better read for what I would consider hacks (also written to api v1).

Review by CJ:

If you are primarily interested in Google Earth, use Web based resources. Material on Google Earth is limited and appears to be appended to a book written on Google Maps.

Review by Chris Thompson:

Simon Winchester's review above does not give this book justice, although I must say that Lester's ability to spin a great story around an arcane subject may rival Winchester's. To me this book is about so much more than the naming of America on a map - it is really about the process of discovery and enlightenment and the pitfalls and pratfalls along the way. I ordered the book in an attempt to research an even more arcane issue I did not find in the book, but was immediately captivated by the exposition, and set my current book aside to read this to completion.

The title of the book could maybe not be more cryptic or off-putting, but don't let that deter you. The Fourth Part of the World refers to the somewhat mythical, yet actual undiscovered lands (after Asia, Europe and Africa) described by the ancients which we know now as America. Lester spins an exhaustively researched yet page-turning story of how this mythical land was gradually given substance and shape by explorers and cartographers. That the mapmakers at the center of the story write "America" on their map is almost incidental to the story. The great story, which Lester tells so wonderfully well, is how incredibly important world maps effected the philosophy of the day. Lester makes the case that it was this map that caused Copernicus to form his theory of the Universe, which if true, is far more significant than simply naming America.

For the average reader like me, this book will fill in a lot of the gaps in your learning about the age of exploration, and possibly give insight to the shortfalls and missteps we continue to repeat while exploring new domains without the proper "map".

"The Fourth Part of the World" is truly not an arcane subject, and it's a wonderful read.

Review by S. McGee:

A six-star book, and one of my favorite book discoveries of the year. This is the kind of book that makes me wish that Amazon allowed us to award an extra bonus star to truly outstanding works.

Remember all those hours we all spent in classrooms, at least one of which had a world map spread out across one wall, and how familiar that world came to look to us, with the Atlantic separating the Americas from the vast landmass of Europe and Asia, and Africa extending south between the Atlantic and Indian oceans? Well, in this fascinating and lively history, Toby Lester tells us how -- over the course of many centuries -- that map and the shape of the world it presents came to be understood and accepted, and how slowly and painfully that process was. Even more intriguing, it's the story of how a world view evolved over even more centuries; of how Europeans who once saw themselves as inhabiting a tiny island surrounding by vast amounts of ocean, with Jerusalem -- as their holy city -- at its center, came to understand the implications of voyages of discovery on foot, horseback and eventually by sea for their view of geographical reality.

Travelers began to venture from Europe into unknown lands centuries before the map at the heart of this book that first identified America as a separate continent and named it after Amerigo Vespucci was first printed in eastern France in 1507. Those who came back -- Papal envoys from the Mongol court, Marco Polo from China and the East Indies -- had wondrous tales to spin -- but where, exactly, was it that they had been? Mapmakers scrambled to keep up. Sometimes the works of these early geographers owe more to invention than to what we now know to be true; sometimes they were able to make big leaps forward after significant voyages of discovery such as those of the Portuguese explorers down the African coast, or of the rediscovery of ancient geographical tomes, such as Petrarch's copy of the earliest Latin geographical work ever found by Pomponious Mela.

We may all know the story of Columbus and other 15th and early 16th century explorers and their voyages, but what I found fascinating to read about were those that had taken place centuries earlier, such as voyages by Italian mariners commissioned by the Portuguese king in the mid-1300s to set off in search of some islands believed to exist somewhere in the Atlantic. They ended up discovering the Canary Islands (as they are now known today) and proceeded to pillage, loot and take prisoners home with them in hopes of converting them to Christianity. (Setting a pattern that would repeat itself on a vaster scale centuries later, as Lester points out.)

In the world we live in today, where there are no significant undiscovered lands and few major geographical puzzles left to solve, this book is particularly enticing. It put me squarely back in the minds of these medieval and Renaissance travelers, scholars and mapmakers as they struggled to put together a jigsaw puzzle to which half the pieces were still missing, and produce an accurate view of the world they were still discovering. Following in their footsteps was exhilarating, thanks both to the facts themselves and to Lester's extremely knowledgeable but always lively writing. While Lester does great work in making the process of map-making itself understandable, he doesn't shun the livelier bits and pieces of the story, such as the way "Mongol chic" spread through western Europe the late 13th and early 14th centuries. (Italian parents even named their sons after Mongol khans!)

This book was sheer delight to read, as it combines intellectual history (the story of the transmission of knowledge and of how new discoveries were incorporated into and transformed the way people viewed their world), science (the art of navigation and marine map-making, for instance) and the stories of the explorers, both those whose curiosity could be pursued only from the medieveal version of an armchair as well as those like Columbus and Vespucci who took the helm of their ships and sailed off into the unknown. (I confess I particularly enjoyed the attention given to some of the more obscure figures, from the mapmakers who finally produced the map bearing the label 'America' to early 14th century Papal scholar Poggio Bracciolini, long a favorite historical character of mine for his intrepid book-hunting expeditions.)

This is a story that may owe its existence to a map but which stretches far beyond that, to tell the story of how we learned to learn about and think about the world we inhabit. It's an ambitious book, but one that will promptly be added to my "top 100" books; the volumes I don't ever want to be without. It will appeal most readily to those with an interest in history and exploration, but I defy anyone to read it and not immediately set off in search of more reading on the topic. (For anyone who hasn't already read it, Daniel Boorstin's The Discoverers is a good overview book, although it doesn't pack the same kind of wallop as this one.) On a bit of a tangent, if you enjoyed this, you might find Island of Lost Maps, (True Story) by Miles Harvey to be intriguing, as it's the tale of how much today's collectors cherish some of these very early maps and the crimes they will commit to possess them.

Highly, highly recommended. If I could put it more strongly than that, I would.

Review by Les L. Johnson:

When you've been working in a field for 30 years it's really difficult to drag yourself backwards and review data you already know, so when I signed up for a GPS (Global Positioning Sattelite) software course I looked at "Map Use & Analysis" by John Campbell as something I could just skip over, but since it was required reading I finally got it out. I was really pleased with the depth of material and the extremely clear explanations of all those mystifying cartography words. Anyone who has no idea about mapping or is a begining student will be able to use this book. The format is excellent with terms higligted and the index and dictionary are well coordinated. I feel that this book is such an excellent reference that I am buying a copy for myself. The only negative thing I have to say is that the illustrations, which are plentiful seem to wander several pages ahead of text, but they are carefully numbered and correspond exactly to the descriptions. Well done! Les L. Johnson

Review by Justin Johnson:

I received a copy of this book from the publisher when I was teaching a university course on cartography. The textbook for the semester had already been selected, so I used this book originally as a second resource while preparing lectures. By the end of the semester, I found myself using this book as the primary source for topics and explanations and suggested it be used in future semesters.This book explains concepts such as projections and coordinate systems in ways that are easy to understand, particularly for new students. The explanations are thorough without bogging down in details. The figures are large, many take up a full page. They are helpful, relevant, and excellently reproduced. The chapters on terrain representation, contours, and topographic features are exceptionally good (there are almost 40 examples of terrain representation) The remote sensing and GIS chapters are brief and introductory, but those are topics best left for other books.I was a little skeptical when I first saw this book, since it appeared to be a somewhat thin, and we were using Robinson's book, which is basically a standard. But, I would recommend this to any map student, teacher, or user. It packs a lot of information in its pages. I still use it as a reference (...).

Review by Joanna Willoughby:

My sister in law recommended this book and I love it. I love the photos and the captions. Quirky and fun. A great read in the bathroom.

Review by T. Franklin:

This book was way more entertaining than I orpginally expected. The sights are really cool but the star of the book is the quirky, clever commentary. Not only do you get a description of what you are looking at, ther is usually a great "what if?" or "did you know?" story as well.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It makes great guest room reading material as there is a little something for everyone.

Review by Scooter McGee:

I had to use this book in two classes for my Land Use/GIS degree. The book's layout is rather confusing, and the information is not laid out in a logical manner. Headings and sub-headings are not apparent and do not follow a natural progression. Seems like the book was put together with a cut-and-paste method! The text is about as dry as a well-done pot roast. Good bedtime reading!
The primary purpose of map making is to guide the reader's eye to areas of importance, and to get the information across to the reader in a concise, interesting, and elegant manner. This book does none of these well.
The breadth of information, however, is quite good, hence the two stars. This is probably why it is used frequently by faculty.

Review by Clyn:

I think it's kind of ironic that this cartography book isn't in color. There's a whole chapter on color and it's in black and white. There's a few pages in the middle of the book with maps in color, but it seems kind of silly. For >0, I want some color pictures.