Information on the topography was of vital importance to any army, whether planning a large campaign or a single battle. Both the Union army and the Confederate army employed many men capable of creating detailed images of the lay of the land. One of the most famous is Jed Hotchkiss, mapmaker to Stonewall Jackson. Several of his maps are reproduced in this volume. Using every medium at their disposal, from pencil to water color, he and others created detailed or rough drawings. Most are worthy of framing and hanging on the wall.
This is a valuable reference work for students of the war and students of mapmaking. It is a large volume and the details stand out.
But superbly reproduced maps are not the only treasures in McElfresh's book. The introductory chapters about the work and importance of topographical engineers to the Civil War is perhaps the best account of them yet published. And one-page biographies are provided for many of them, some famous for other, post-war careers (Ambrose Bierce and George Armstrong Custer, for example).
This is an important and beautiful book that holds valuable keys to this conflict for both Civil War buffs and bystanders.
In this vigorous history of maps and their creators, New York Times science writer John Noble Wilford recounts the accomplishments of dozens of cartographers from many cultures and times, among them Gerardus Mercator, Francis Beaufort, Charles Mason, and Jean Fernel. Ranging from ancient Chinese scrolls to the latest satellite images of distant planets, he renders a history full of "heroics and everyday routine, of personal and national rivalries, of influential mistakes and brilliant insights." He also reviews key scientific and technological advances that have accompanied the rise of modern maps, among them the development of fractal geometry, geosynchronous displays, remote sensing, and ever more accurate surveying instruments and techniques. --Gregory McNamee
is exceedingly difficult to review since my feelings toward it are so ambivalent. If I were to judge a book by its cover I'd give this all-time-favorite status.
Design and construction (in the cloth edition) are beautifully rendered, with a brevity and diminutive size that adds to the appeal. The way it deals with obscure esoteric historical matters increases irresistibility for someone with my interests. I'd love to give it "must read" approbation, but unfortunately things aren't so simple.
There are two reasons why. First the excusable one: it doesn't play out like a traditional novel; there isn't much of a plot to speak of. But this is not an accident I believe, given
the Nominalist philosophical view implied by the book's narrative voice, which forms the
second flaw. And it is not excusable. Nominalism holds that reality is "all in your mind."
A can be B can be C, etc. Nothing is really what you think it is. Most people know a falsehood
when they see it, and this one is as destructive as they come! It is however the explicit philosophical view of many 20th century intellectuals, most notably Umberto Eco, as illustrated in the protagonist of his famous novel,
.
What becomes starkly clear
is the reason WHY the book is no traditional novel: for in a situation where nothing can be defined for certain, a novel (or anything) can be whatever you want it to be........
It is thus with considerable trepidation that I observe
, a work of salient charm, but false underlying premises.
Boring and Pretentious.......2002-03-16
Not my cup of tea. I really REALLY wanted to like it, but I could not. Too slow, too earnest for its own good. Cowan writes nice words but strung together, they create a series of pieces that seem to make the author appear to jump up and down saying "look at me! Look how smart I am!"
Sorry, just didn't take.
Read on!.......2002-01-08
For a project in my world history class, we had to read a historical novel, then, write an essay about the plot, the story, etc.
I chose this book because it sounded interesting, and it was only 150 pages.
From the start, it was hard to understand, not to interesting, and boring. So i looked around the internet to find reviews and summaries about it, and after reading many, i found the book to be quite interesting, and i started reading it.
Later, i find out the book is worth reading because it gets better as you read on if you really think about what's going on.
rich stew of ideas.......2001-11-04
Inevitably a book that confirms or conforms to our own conceits has a particular appeal. So it is entirely possible that other readers will not enjoy this slender but potent novel of ideas as much as I did. But, because I agree with so many of the concepts contained within and with the central premise on which it is based, I really thought it was extraordinary.
The narrative structure of the book is deceptively simple. James Cowan claims to have found the journal of the 15th century Venetian cartographer Fra Mauro. Within the pages of the journal, Mauro describes his work on what he hopes will be his masterpiece, a great mappa mundi (world map) that will contain everything that he knows about the geography of the world (the map pictured above is actually not the map described in the book, but instead the only known surviving Mauro map). The irony, of course, is that Mauro lived in the monastery of San Michele di Murano and was not himself a traveler or explorer. His definitive map was to be based on knowledge acquired by and from others. The journal describes visits he received from individuals who had actually traveled abroad and were interested in sharing their knowledge with him.
Now I spend a lot of time in these reviews unabashedly arguing for the supremacy of Western Civilization--its Culture: music, literature and the plastic arts; Political and Social Institutions; Economic System; Scientific advances; etc.. And it seems to me that there is one great achievement that is really central to all of the achievements or, at the very least, has facilitated all of them; that is the development of means to systematize, retrieve and pass on knowledge. It should be obvious on its face that no culture that failed to produce a written language can lay any claim to even being a true Civilization. Even those which developed languages, but failed to develop knowledge or failed to accumulate and preserve knowledge, can hardly claim to be great Civilizations. And those which made developed some capacity to further knowledge and to safeguard the results for the use of subsequent generations, but failed to disseminate such knowledge widely, must pale by comparison too. For what we in the West achieved was a set of systems for accumulating knowledge, experimenting in order to increase that knowledge, storing and sharing that knowledge widely and a series of religious and political theories to induce citizens to strive to further all of these achievements.
So it is that an early map maker like Fra Mauro, cloistered within his cell, can take on such a heroic aura and his story can be so exciting. And here are some of the passages where Cowan develops some of these same ideas:
-----
Mauro is visited by an elderly Jew of Rhodes, who tells him:
It is in us all, this desire to experience the kinship that exists between our innermost being and the
will that created such a kinship in the first place. As such a desire is realized, we become
preoccupied with strange and uncanny aspects in Nature herself. We are almost tempted to regard
them as our own moods, our own creations. For my part, I know that the boundary between
myself and Nature sometimes wavers and melts away, so that I can no longer be sure whether what
I see with my own eyes springs from outward or inner impressions. An experience such as this is
one sure way of discovering how creative we are, and how deeply our soil participates in the
perpetual creation of the world. The same invisible divinity is at work in us as it is in Nature. If the
outside world were perchance to perish, I know that any one of us would be capable of rebuilding
it. I say these things because I believe that mountain and stream, leaf and tree, root and flower,
everything that has ever been formed in Nature lies preformed within us and springs from the soul,
whose essence is eternity. Of course, this essence is beyond all our conceivable knowledge, but we
can feel it nevertheless.
------
And just in passing you come across such gem like sentences and ideas as this one: "Quitting the place that we love means that we are condemned to inhabit our loss forever."
I urge everyone to read and enjoy this book. The journal entry style makes it particularly susceptible to reading in separate nightly installments. It is a book that you can easily pick up and put down, as indeed you may wish to in order to savor the rich stew of ideas.
GRADE: A+
Average customer rating:
- Revisionist history at its best
- A lively coverage of maps
- An informed and informative history book
- Feast of Fascinating Facts
|
The Road to There: Mapmakers and Their Stories
Val Ross
Manufacturer: Tundra Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 Exploration & Discovery
| History & Historical Fiction
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Ages 9-12
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0887766218
Release Date: 2003-09-30 |
Book Description
Winner of the 2004 Norma Fleck Award for Canadian children’s non-fiction
Honor Book for the Society of School Librarians International’s Best Book Award – Social Studies, Grades 7-12
Shortlisted for the Children's Literature Roundtable Information Book of the Year
2003 winner of the Mr. Christie’s Book Award Seal
Shortlisted for the 2004 Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s Non-fiction
Included on VOYA’s ninth annual Nonfiction Honor List
Selected for inclusion in CCBC Choices 2004: the best-of-the-year list published by the Cooperative Children’s Book center of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Named Notable Book by the International Reading Association’s Children’s Book Award in the intermediate nonfiction category
Road maps; sailor’s charts; quilts; songlines; gilded parchment covered with jewel-like colors; computer printouts – to guide us through the strange, vast, beautiful, and mysterious frontiers of the world of maps, Val Ross presents the men and women who made them.
Here are some of the unexpected stories of history’s great mapmakers: the fraud artists who deliberately distorted maps for political gain, Captain Cook, the slaves on the run who found their way thanks to specially-pieced quilts, the woman who mapped London’s streets, princes, doctors, and warriors. These are the people who helped us chart our way in the world, under the sea, and on to the stars.
With reproductions of some of the most important maps in history, this extraordinary book, packed with information, is as fascinating and suspenseful as a novel.
Customer Reviews:
Revisionist history at its best.......2006-05-27
This is a "beautiful" book, but it is overwhelmingly anti-European, anti-Christian and downright revisionist. From almost the very first page, Ms. Ross chooses to portray Europeans, especially Christian Europeans/Americans, in the most negative light possible.
She finds it of paramount importance to mention that the Vinland map may be a Jesuit forgery, to portray Henry the Navigator as the "father of slavery" and describe King Roger II of Sicily as the "grandson of Norman warlords, descendants of Norsemen who had wandered into Italy looking for things to steal and people to kill." Roger's "best friend" Al-Idrisi's ancestors, were by contrast "true aristocrats, descendants of the Caliphs who ruled Malaga in Spain." No mention is made of the fact that the Caliphs of Malaga were also warlords and grandsons of invaders from North Africa.
Her treatment of the Lewis & Clark Corps of Discovery journey is particularly disturbing. Writes Ross : "The Mandans don't realize who they were helping. President Thomas Jefferson, son of a land surveyor, has sent out the Corps of Discovery to claim western North America for the United States. The fact that people such as the Mandans have lived there for thousands of years doesn't matter ....... Lewis and Clark have come to survey the land for settlement by white people." Nowhere does Ross find it convenient to mention the Louisiana Purchase.
This is probably the single most biased book that it has ever been my misfortune to come across, of value only as propaganda. Save your money!
A lively coverage of maps.......2004-04-06
Val Ross' Road To There is a book on cartography and tells of the men and women who made maps, from road maps to sailor's charts. Road To There is a lively coverage of maps, from fraud artists who distorted maps for political gain to slaves who escaped to freedom from pieced quilts. An unusual, intriguing book, readers of all agens (many an adult!) will relish Road To There!
An informed and informative history book.......2003-11-17
The Road To There: Mapmakers And Their Stories by Val Ross is an informed and informative history book for young readers that tells of famous mapmakers throughout the centuries, from great sailors of legend to the unknown heroes who secretly passed on directions along the Underground Railroad through quilts. Black-and-white and color photographs nicely embellish this absorbing and highly recommended anthology showcasing diverse human endeavors to chart the unknown.
Feast of Fascinating Facts.......2003-10-24
This book held my interest from first page to last; Isaac Asimov could not have done a better job on this intrinsically fascinating subject. There are answers here to questions I've wondered about all my life, and stories I'll remember as long as I live. Ross has John McPhee's clean spare style, and his knack of involving you totally in things you thought you already knew something about. I happened to read this the day after seeing an hour-long Ken Burns documentary about Lewis and Clark, and Ross made their story far more interesting to me in a single chapter.
Book Description
In 1400 Europe was behind large parts of the world in its understanding of the use of maps. For instance, the people gf China and of Japan were considerably more advanced in this respect. And yet, by 1600 the Europeans had come to use maps for a huge variety of tasks, and were far ahead of the rest of the world in their appreciation of the power and use of cartography. The Mapmakers' Quest seeks to understand this development - not only to tease out the strands of thought and practice which led to the use of maps, but also to assess the ways in which such use affected European societies and economies. Taking as a starting point the question of why there were so few maps in Europe in 1400 and so many by 1650, the book explores the reasons for this and its implications for European history. It examines, inter al, how mapping and military technology advanced in tandem, how modern states' territories were mapped and borders drawn up, the role of maps in shaping the urban environment, and cartography's links to the new sciences.
Customer Reviews:
A useful and enlightening look at the origins of the modern map.......2005-12-03
It's easy to look at the history of maps as a sort of progression from the "primitive" to the "sophisticated", in which the creation of the modern scientific survey in the eighteenth century marks the biggest turning point. As much of the scholarship over the last 20 years points out though, the history of maps is a tangled web, just as maps are a tangled combination art and science, politics and nature, selectivity and objectivity. David Buisseret does an admirable job of sorting out the strands that came together in the modern survey, and traces them back into the late middle ages, so we can see them emerging not miraculously from the forehead of superstition, but organicallay as the way people saw, governed, and thought changed in the Renaissance and the century or so following. A thought provoking read.
Book Description
Will Thomas survive this investigation? The jury is out.
In the year 1592, a series of terrible murders is spreading fear across the remote West Berkshire Downs. It is Thomas the Falconer who discovers the connection: all the dead men once sat on an inquest jury. But who is now targeting the former jurymen? And why is the High Sheriff taking such an interest?
There are certainly some odd characters on the Downs this springtime, including a flamboyant travelling showman, whom Thomas befriends; and the arrogant mapmaker Christopher Mead, who is assisted by his beautiful daughter Grace. But after a while, even Grace's behaviour arouses Thomas's suspicions . . .
In this, his fourth mystery, Thomas must match wits with a most cunning and elusive adversary. Only after a desperate struggle on the wild downlands is justice finally done, and peace restored once again...
Books:
- Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War
- Modern China and Japan: A Brief History
- Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources
- Murder of a Botoxed Blonde (Scumble River Mysteries, Book 9)
- My Side of the Mountain
- National Security and The Nuclear Dilemma, 1945-1991
- Naval Warfare in the Age of Sail: The Evolution of Fighting Tactics, 1650-1815
- Nightjohn
- Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law
- Out of Egypt: A Memoir
Books Index
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Thorough and Interesting Review of Subject.......2007-09-14
