Topophilia* is the dominant theme of Maphead by Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings. Jennings details his personal fascination with the love of place and then takes the reader on a wonderful exploration of map culture - from earliest parchment to the sophistication of modern day GPS.
During the journey, your discoveries will include;
Geography and Map Division of The Library of Congress containing the largest map collection in human history with 8500 cases with five drawers in each case. In sports terms the equivalent of two football fields.
Eccentricity of the author. As a young boy he slept with the 1979 Hammond Medallion World Atlas on the next pillow.Open Street Map - the indispensable technology that aided Haitian earthquake victims.
Gaskin - her parents and friends call her Lilly. She is an undisputed map prodigy not quite 2 years old.
Royal Geographic Society - the venue for the London Map Fair and a veritable treasure trove of past cartographic history including Henry Morton Stanley's pith helmet (the Stanley who found Livingstone), Charles Darwin's pocket sextant and Edmund Hillary's oxygen canisters.
Preparing for the National Geographic Bee which dwarfs the National Spelling Bee in difficulty
Hippocampus - the part of the brain responsible for spatial cognition
Yen for competitive travel. There are a myriad of travel clubs where he who visits the most countries is the winner.
*Topophilia literally means love of place. Geographer Yi-Fu Tuan stated that topophilia "can be defined widely so as to include all emotional connections between physical environment and human beings" Ken Jennings childhood memories of the beautiful Willamette Valley of the Pacific Northwest led him back to his life outside Seattle as an adult. In the in-between years he lived in Seoul, Salt Lake City, Spain and Singapore (a product of accidental alliteration).
RR@RR
Personal note - as a person who is definitely challenged by maps I am hoping that Maphead will have a positive effect on my hippocampus. Only time will tell.
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