Strange Maps – A collection of fun and peculiar maps that you won’t find in an ordinary atlas
Strange Maps: An Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities
by Frank Jacobs
Studio
2009, 256 pages, 9.5 x 11.1 x 0.7 inches, softcover
$19 Buy a copy on Amazon
In his blog Strange Maps, Frank Jacobs publishes a selection of cartographical curiosities and trivia that you would not find in an ordinary atlas, and this book is a collection of his most relevant and interesting posts to that date. But don’t think that each map is just a curious or historical variation of a regular map. There are many maps of fictional places, “what if” scenarios, cartographic mistakes, comical creations or crazy ideas on how to remap the world.
For instance, an old map showing California as an island (a cartographic mistake that survived some hundred years on many maps), a map showing Europe if Germany had won World War I, a map of the borders of Europe based on a would-be fascist victory in World War II, and the map about Thomas Jefferson’s proposal to divide the Northwest territory into 10 new states. If you like literature, you’ll see a map of George Orwell’s 1984 world, and if you like visual arts, you’ll appreciate the different versions of maps depicting the island of Manhattan.
But if all the entries in this book are already available on the author’s blog, why should someone buy this book? Well, I think that the response is the very raison d'etre of Wink Books: some books are better in print than in pixels. – Alessandro Nicoli de Mattos
May 21, 2014