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3 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 Great maps, great background, irritating socio-political comments throughout Jul 31, 2009
Well, I'm kind of split on this one. This is a great, comprehensive treatment of maps across time, history, and cultures. That said, Virga's socio-political viewpoint leaks out throughout the book. So, it makes a great reference book for the evolution of maps around the world, with lots of great color illustrations (though they make you want to track down a full-sized copy so you can read the details - keep a magnifying glass handy when you read this book). But to read cover to cover as a history, it gets a bit tiring. My general gripe with Virga's writing is that maps made by non-European cultures are wonderful, brilliant, advanced, etc., while maps made by Eurpoean cultures are tools for the spread of colonialism, capitalism, or any other -ism that European culture is typically criticised for. Regardless of one's opinion about this aspect of European history, it's usually not relevant to the topic at hand. An example of the introduction of a socio-political bias that is unnecessary to the purpose, is this line, regarding maps used to define international agreements about nations' economic boundaries into coastal waters - "...opponents in the United States argue that the Law of the Sea Treaty...interferes with private industry's right to profit at the expense of biodiversity". That last phrase ("at the expense of biodiversity) is almost certainly not what opponents argue, is dropped into the text with no basis in information already provided, and has nothing to do with the map or the discussion of the map except that there are opponents to such treaties.
Anyway, it's actually a good book for background on maps from human history and from around the world. It's just best to take the text in small doses and try to set aside the blatant political commentary that slips in here and there.
 Detailed and Visually Satisfying May 28, 2009
For people interested in maps, this book presents lots of variety and detail. It is probably one of the better collections on this topic.
6 of 7 found the following review helpful:
 Where's the bibliography? May 16, 2009
Although this is an attractive coffee table book, the lack of a bibliography is troubling. Vincent Virga does not cite the scholars whose ideas he disseminates. Virga admits in the acknowledgments that he didn't "get" maps or mapmaking when he started the project. Yet, he takes credit for the ideas, as if by hanging out with scholars and librarians at the Library of Congress, he was able to come up with a "new approach" to cartography and to understand the map history of every corner of the globe. This would take a lifetime of study. One of his main sources is the multi-volume encyclopedic History of Cartography published by University of Chicago Press, which introduces and explains many of the same maps. Yet he never cites this important and original work nor refers his readers to it. In fact, he does not cite a single book or article.
More ethical and scrupulous nonfiction authors who write for a popular audience use endnotes and a bibliography or an annotated bibliography to give credit to the scholars and authors whose work they popularize. Virga's "cartobibliography" shows only where he got permission to reprint the images. Without a real bibliography, most readers will never find the scholarly works where Virga got his ideas. It is troubling that the Library of Congress participated in this project on
those terms.
12 of 17 found the following review helpful:
Splendid images, awful prose Dec 10, 2008
I recently had the opportunity to peruse this book in a local library. I agree with all of the other reviewers that this book has astounding images, well-reproduced, and documenting a wide variety of maps in a multitude of different contexts. There are plenty of cartographic classics (the double sided ancient Chinese grid map, the "clover" Crusader map centered around Jerusalem) alongside some less well known maps (an Etruscan divining liver map--that's a stone replica of a liver with marks about how to divine things from it, a Japanese historical battle map showing the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate).
However, I must say that the accompanying text is really lacking. To be frank, it's downright repulsive. Stylistically, it's uninspiring at best. Furthermore, the text is filled with "explanations" about "what's really going on" that are totally unsubstantiated. Unfortunately, this book is hardly unique in that regard. It is symptomatic of our times to show "expertise" on this or that via simplistic reductive arguments that we've all grown too tired to challenge.
Two examples come to mind specifically. In the section on Japanese maps of Japan, he tries to argue that the ambiguity of the maps implies a mindset amongst the Japanese putting Japan as being "undefined in space" or something of that nature. Now that claim may very well be true, but he presents next to argument to support it other than images which appear just as ambiguous as other maps. There may be a way to deduce that conclusion from the maps but he doesn't show anything, he merely states.
More nauseating was the pat analysis of the Vietnam war. He reproduces a formerly classified US government map showing South Vietnam totally fragmented by VC presence and uses it to launch into a tired tirade about the follies of the US government blah blah blah. Once again, the conclusion may or may not be true but shiny pictures aren't really a substitute for critical analysis.
This book raises some very interesting questions about what and how much one can conclude about a society from the character of its maps. However, the shameless sophistry that follows makes it clear that the author has little regard for the complexity that such questions entail.
So if I was addressing a potential buyer/reader, I would say that the images in the book really are fabulous and the comments are at times enlightening. But if you're the kind of reader who doesn't appreciate pat conclusions that are pre-determined by some unspoken post-god-knows-what party line, brace yourself for a beautiful book but a stomach turning read.
0 of 17 found the following review helpful:
no show Nov 11, 2008
never received the book - was later informed it was sold by mistake and i received a refund.
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