Product Description

'My name is Mike and I am a map addict. There, it's said!' Maps not only show the world, they help it turn. On an average day, we will consult some form of map approximately a dozen times, often without even noticing: checking the A-Z, the road atlas or the Sat Nav, scanning the tube or bus map, a quick Google online or hours wasted flying over a virtual Earth, navigating a way around a shopping centre, watching the weather forecast, planning a walk or a trip, catching up on the news, booking a holiday or hotel. Maps pepper logos, advertisements, illustrations, books, web pages and newspaper and magazine articles: they are a cipher for every area of human existence. At a stroke, they convey precise information about topography, layout, history, politics and power. They are the unsung heroes of life: Map Addict sings their song. There are some fine, dry tomes out there about the history and development of cartography: this is not one of them. Map Addict mixes wry observation with hard fact and considerable research, unearthing the offbeat, the unusual and the downright pedantic in a celebration of all things maps.In Map Addict, we learn the location of what has officially been named by the OS as the most boring square kilometre in the land; we visit the town fractured into dozens of little parcels of land split between two different countries and trek around many other weird borders of Britain and Europe; we test the theories that the new city of Milton Keynes was built to a pagan alignment and that women can't read maps. Combining history, travel, politics, memoir and oblique observation in a highly readable, and often very funny, style, Mike Parker confesses how his own impressive map collection was founded on a virulent teenage shoplifting habit, ponders how a good leftie can be so gung-ho about British cartographic imperialism and wages a one-man war against the moronic blandishments of the Sat Nav age.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1216 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Review
"Most of all, this is a witty entreaty to leave the satnav in the car, and to head for the hills with the Ordnance Survey." --BBC Country File magazine, June issue

Review
'A highly engaging and thoughtful, haphazard and personal, meander around maps and map-related arcana'

Review
'This is a book that's well worth a read'

Customer Reviews

map addiction
An interesting book for anyone who can spend hours pouring over a map.
Read it. But have google earth and the internet on hand to locate the images and maps in question. Brings it to life.

Good, but wanders off the map a bit too much
I enjoyed this book, it's entertainingly written and has numerous interesting facts and witty observations. I would recommend it for anyone who is vaguely interested in maps or geography, you don't have to be a map addict to enjoy it.

However, I agree with others that it can be somewhat frustrating since the author seems to digress too often. You can end up in the middle of a chapter wondering how on earth you got to where you are, since the connections to the map theme seem to be receding into the distance. On the journey through the book, Mike Parker seems to have left the map behind, and instead taken the reader on a disorientating unplanned wander, which is often interesting and fun but not where you thought you were going.

Yes, maybe, no
I've given this three stars. I could easily have given it five or one. I loved the detail of map addiction. I shoplifted maps myself as a teenager and was equally random about areas of interest. Some of the historical detail is fascinating. The bits about the MOD classifying sites which would then lead to blanks on the map was information I could have spotted myself but didn't.

If you're a hard-core Scottish walker, there's just not enough about wild country, about the various conspiracy theories about heights (crucial to list-followers such as Munro's) or about the history of surveying the highlands. I liked his blanket condemnation of in-car GPS equipment but felt condemnation of GPS on the hill was missing.

Finally for one star was the Nick Hornby-esque harping to his private life. It's not homophobia that I was bored with his repetitive reference to his (non-map loving) boyfriend. Girlfriends, children or pets would have been equally irritating.