Have you ever spent hours looking at maps, fascinated with things like the courses of rivers, latitude and longitude, state and national capitals, the highest and lowest points of a state and why states are shaped like they are? If so, you are the “title character” of this book— a “maphead” (aka geography wonk or cartophile)— and will love it. If you’re not so inclined, but are curious how anyone could possibly find maps that interesting, you may also enjoy this read. Personally, I’m in the first category; I can still remember going on car trips as a kid and following our route very closely on a road atlas, counting the number of water towers of small towns we passed through to assess the size of the burg (the more water towers, the bigger the town). Jennings, the Jeopardy! champion and fellow map nerd, has written a very engaging book that makes us cartophiles feel less isolated in our pastime (or, in some cases, obsession). Cleverly using geography terms as chapter titles, he discusses different kinds of geography wonks, including highpointers, geocachers, road atlas rally racers, confluence hunters and antique map collectors. Jennings interviews contestants of the National Geography Bee (with a cameo appearance by Alex Trebek) and puts the often-decried American geographic ignorance in some perspective. He talks about maps of imaginary worlds, like ones of Tolkien’s Middle Earth included in the pages of Lord of the Rings, and how technology is making paper maps obsolete for some of their traditional functions, while at the same time potentially making geography more engaging than ever.
