NON-FICTION

The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology


This is another one of Simon Winchester’s exciting tales. I really enjoyed his two books on The Oxford English Dictionary - The Meaning of Everything and The Professor and the Madman, and thought this might be worth a look. It definitely was not as good as the other two, possibly due to the topic. Winchester strays from the topic most of the time making it easy to get lost in the story at hand. Although it was an interesting story, he deals a little too non-chalantly with the evolution aspect - making the rest of the information not quite as credible for me. His humor and colloquial account still makes for a refreshing read.

Seeing I’m not really interested in geology, these two titles deal with maps and exploration.

• Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before – Tony Horwitz

Not really about a cook in the food sense, it deals with ocean exploration and completing the first map of the world.

• The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime - Miles Harvey

An exploration about a man who stole priceless maps from a library.