“Someone needs to tell him that the lines on maps are not supposed to be this entertaining.” Drew Gallagher reviews Jonn Elledge’s Brief History of the World in 47 Borders in the Washington Independent Review of Books. “Throughout, Elledge’s writing is equal parts insightful and amusing, and his myriad footnotes contain some of the funniest writing.” (Published too late to make this month’s book roundup.)
A lack of time and energy have conspired to prevent me from serving up a gift guide this year, but I can point you to a few links related to books that have come out this year.
First up, I have in my hands a review copy of the seventh volume of the Atlas of Design. It is the usual collection of marvellous cartography from familiar and unfamiliar mapmakers, some of which quite unexpected, and I hope to have more to say about it shortly. It made its debut at the NACIS annual meeting in October and is available to purchase from this page. See my review of the sixth volume.
Matthew Edney’s list of map history books published or seen in 2024 is now live; he’s been posting such a list each year since 2017 (previously).
Alaistair Bonnett’s latest, 40 Maps That Will Change How You See the World came out in September from Ivy Press. Geographical magazine published an interview with him in October. I’ve reviewed two of Bonnett’s books here before—Off the Map (Unruly Places) and The Age of Islands (Elsewhere)—which were more about geographical curiosities than maps per se. Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop
To promote A History of the World in 47 Borders (Wildfire, April)—published in the U.S. as A Brief History of the World in 47 Borders (The Experiment, October)—Jonn Elledge has posted a list of the 47 facts about the 47 borders that are the focus of the book’s 47 chapters. Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop
Mark Ovenden’s latest, Iconic Transit Maps (Prestel, 2024) is a look at transit map design via fifty examples around the world. Cameron Booth reviews it on his Transit Maps blog. Way back in 2008, I reviewed the first edition of his Transit Maps of the World. Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop
Related: Map Books of 2024.
Sea level rise and coral reef destruction could have an impact on international boundaries, according to a study by University of Sydney researchers published in Environmental Research Letters. Coral reefs form the basis for a number of claims on maritime zones, which could suddenly be in doubt if reef destruction or changes to a reef’s low-water line erase that basis. Press release.
Tom created the Topologist’s Map of the World to show how countries connect to each other. Deliberately emulating the style of a T-O map, Tom started with a Voronoi diagram and finished the map in Inkscape. Exclaves are ignored (too complicated), and islands encircle the rest of the map. Among Tom’s observations: “Some countries get really distorted—mostly when they find themselves near the centre of a continent. I’d often thought of Germany as the centre of Europe, but here, Austria and Hungary get really stretched out because they end up bordering countries on opposite sides of the continent.” [r/MapPorn]
Out today: Zoran Nikolic’s Atlas of Unusual Borders (Collins), a book that “presents unusual borders, enclaves and exclaves, divided or non-existent cities and islands.” Another compendium of geographical curiosities: a genre we’ve seen before (see, for example, the Atlas of Improbable Places, Atlas Obscura, the Atlas of Remote Islands, the Atlas of Cursed Places, Beyond the Map or Unruly Places/Off the Map) except this time it’s about borders.
Our friend Alejandro Polanco Masa is updating Maptorian for 2020, and outlines some of the changes to the political map that have taken place since 2014 that he needs to incorporate into his vector map product.
The print edition of today’s Washington Post maps the fences and walls along the U.S.-Mexico border. The online version, which I seem to have missed when it was posted in October, offers a much more detailed look: it’s an interactive, scrollable map that offers a flyover view of the border, fenced and unfenced, as it passes through farms, ranches, towns and impossibly rugged terrain between the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico.
