Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks (40 page)

63
the ghosts of dead mapmakers:
Ibid.,
p. 137
.

64
the “pink bits”:
This was the “British Empire Map of the World,” the brainchild of the Canadian schoolteacher George Parkin. Klinghoffer,
The Power of Projections,
p. 79
.

64
localized versions:
You can view a comparison at “Disputed Territory? Google Maps Localizes Borders Based on Local Laws,” Search Engine Roundtable, Dec. 1, 2009,
www.seroundtable.com/archives/021249.html
.

64
God would strike her down:
Nadav Shragai et al., “Olmert Backs Tamir’s Proposal to Include Green Line in Textbook Maps,”
Ha’aretz,
June 12, 2006.

65
1,807 feet east:
Elizabeth White, “Four Corners Marker Is Off Target,”
Denver Post,
Apr. 23, 2009.

65
Mike Parker has noted:
In his very entertaining
Map Addict
(London: Collins, 2009),
p. 131
.
Map Addict
was released while I was writing
Map-head
and is a very British version of this book’s own map-nerd-memoir mission statement.

67
the Mount McKinley controversy:
James W. Loewen,
Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong
(New York: Touchstone, 2007),
p. 39
.

67
“Whorehouse Meadow”:
Mark Monmonier,
From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How Maps Name, Claim, and Inflame
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006),
p. 64
. Monmonier’s book is a particularly good exploration of politically incorrect toponyms and the issues they raise.

68
tantalizing place-names:
Wilford,
The Mapmakers,
p. 165
.

68
Ortelius’s 1596 note:
James Romm, “A New Forerunner of Continental Drift,”
Nature
367 (February 3, 1994), pp. 407–408.

69
the eccentric town toponyms:
I took most of these examples from David Jouris’s clever
All over the Map: An Extraordinary Atlas of the United States
(Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1994). If you’re looking for U.S. maps depicting 75 Christmas-themed town names or 250 towns with the same names as famous writers, this is the book for you.

69
an enterprising local tailor:
Meic Stephens,
The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 354.

69
back to being Halfway, Oregon:
William Drenttel, “What Ever Happened to
Half.com
, Oregon?,” Design Observer, Aug. 29, 2006,
www.designobserver.com/observatory/entry.html?entry=4707
.

70
Sharer, Kentucky, turned down:
“Gambling Site Offers to Buy Town’s Name,” Associated Press, Sept. 26, 2005.

70
Butt Hole Road:
“Residents of ‘Butt Hole Road’ Club Together to Change Street’s Unfortunate Name,”
Daily Mail,
May 26, 2009.

70
“I feel sure”:
David Usborne, “The Town That Refuses to Be Ashamed of Its Name,”
The Independent,
Mar. 22, 1995.

71
every place got a cozy:
Harwood,
To the Ends of the Earth,
p. 80
.

71
suspiciously un-Japanese names:
Vincent Virga,
Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations
(New York: Little, Brown, 2007),
p. 76
.

72
“Under the influence”:
Michael Theodoulou, “Ideological Gulf Enflames Iran,”
The Times,
Dec. 3, 2004.

73
tensions in the Gulf are still running high:
Tom Hundley, “A Gulf by Any Other Name,” GlobalPost, Mar. 15, 2010,
www.globalpost.com/dispatch/middle-east/100312/persian-gulf-arabian
.

73
“Even on a stormy day”:
Marcel Proust,
Swann’s Way
(New York: Modern Library, 1913/2003), pp. 550–551.

75
“No lost maps”:
This quote, and other historical details about the map’s creation and discovery, were drawn from Toby Lester,
The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name
(New York: Free Press, 2009).

77
“They . . . are excessively”:
Jack Hitt, “Original Spin: How Lurid Sex Fantasies Gave Us ‘America,’”
Washington Monthly,
Mar. 1993,
p. 25
.

78
“The science of geography”:
Biography for Beginners
(London, T. W. Laurie, 1905),
p. 5
.

CHAPTER 5: ELEVATION

82
a record price:
“Million-Dollar Map Tops Julia’s Winter Auction,” Antiques and the Arts Online, Feb. 9, 2010,
http://antiquesandthearts.com/Antiques/AuctionWatch/2010–02–09__11–49–11.html
.

84
making its final appearance:
Raymond H. Ramsey,
No Longer on the
Map: Discovering Places That Never Were
(New York: Viking, 1972),
p. 215
.

84
The Mountains of Kong:
James R. Akerman and Robert W. Karrow, Jr., eds.,
Maps: Finding Our Place in the World
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007),
p. 145
.

87
Columbus relied:
Vincent Virga,
Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations (New York: Little, Brown, 2007),
p. 24
.

87
the vast “Billington Sea”:
I first saw this wonderful anecdote in John Noble Wilford,
The Mapmakers
(New York: Vintage, 2000,
p. 167
) and learned about Francis’s checkered past in William Bradford’s own journals,
The Mayflower Papers
(London: Penguin, 2007),
p. 120
.

87
“The Great American Desert”:
Virga,
Cartographia,
p. 206
.

88
“Your work has cost me”:
Harwood,
To the Ends of the Earth: 100 Maps That Changed the World
(Newton Abbott, Devon: Davis & Charles, 2006),
p. 108
.

88
new sanitation systems:
Akerman and Karrow,
Maps,
p. 155
.

89
fell to their deaths:
Harwood,
To the Ends of the Earth,
p. 125
.

89
James Rennell:
Clements R. Markham,
Major James Rennell and the Rise of Modern English Geography
(London: Cassell, 1895),
p. 48
.

89
Nain Singh:
Singh’s remarkable story has been told many times; I’ve relied here on the chapter on pundits in John Noble Wilford,
The Map-makers
.

90
“God had endowed”:
Charles Kendall Adams,
Christopher Columbus: His Life and His Work
(New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1892),
p. 20
.

90
Vespucci was a map collector:
C. Edwards Lester,
The Life and Voyages of Americus Vespucius
(New Haven, Conn.: Horace Mansfield, 1858),
p. 70
.

91
a “Palin effect”:
Gemma Bowes, “Eastern Europe Braced for Palin Effect,”
The Observer,
Sept. 16, 2007. In U.S. electoral politics, the “Palin effect” is something different, don’tcha know.

92
In 1504, King Manuel I:
As a result of a deft bit of map theft by an Italian spy named Alberto Cantino. Harwood,
To the Ends of the Earth,
p. 64
.

92
“Almost everything was changed”:
Bill Keller, “Soviet Aide Admits Maps Were Faked for 50 Years,”
The New York Times,
Sept. 3, 1988.

93
E. Forbes Smiley III:
The best reporting on the Smiley case was done by Kim Martineau in the
Hartford Courant
and by William Finnegan in “A Theft in the Library: The Case of the Missing Maps,”
The New Yorker,
Oct. 17, 2005,
pp. 64
–78.

95
“If you take”:
Lillian Thomas, “Valuable Maps Too Easily Stolen from Books, Libraries,”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,
Aug. 16, 2005.

96
Farhad Hakimzadeh:
Sandra Laville, “British Library Seeks £300,000 Damages from Book Vandal,”
The Guardian,
Jan. 17, 2009.

98
Handel enraged him:
Philipp Blom,
To Have and To Hold: An Intimate History of Collectors and Collecting
(New York: Overlook, 2003),
p. 82
.

98
an amazing hodgepodge:
From inventories I found in Blom’s book as well as in Umberto Eco,
The Infinity of Lists
(New York: Rizzoli, 2009).

99
“some to beautify their halls”:
In his preface to
The English Euclid
.

99
“took great delight”:
John Aubrey,
Brief Lives
(Oxford, England: Clarendon, 1898), p. 329.

99
Samuel Pepys had:
Jonathan Potter,
Collecting Antique Maps: An Introduction to the History of Cartography
(London: Jonathan Potter, 2002),
p. 10
.

99
by 1560, a quarter:
Catherine Delano Smith, “Map Ownership in Sixteenth-Century Cambridge,”
Imago Mundi
47, no. 1 (1995),
pp. 67
–93.

99
Vermeer was a particular map fan:
James A. Welu, “Vermeer: His Cartographic Sources,”
Art Bulletin
57 (December 1975), pp. 529–547.

101
Christian mapmakers were constrained:
Daniel Boorstin,
The Discoverers
(New York: Vintage, 1985),
p. 148
.

CHAPTER 6: LEGEND

105
“Most of us”:
C. S. Lewis,
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
(New York: HarperCollins, 1952),
p. 5
.

106
“This view looks like Islandia”:
The Wrights’ recollections of their father can be found in Sylvia Wright’s introduction to the second edition of
Islandia
(New York: Rinehart, 1958).

107
“trompe-l’oeil, on a vast scale”:
“Daydream,”
Time,
May 18, 1942,
p. 86
.
Time
was so taken by the geography of Islandia that its editors commissioned a new map of the island to run alongside its review.