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How to Draw a Map
How to Draw a Map is a fascinating meditation on the centuries-old art of map-making, from the first astronomical maps to the sophisticated GPS guides of today.
Maps have influenced humanity in many unexpected ways: life, death, sexual reproduction, espionage, war and peace. How to Draw a Map traces the story of mapmaking – cartography – from the first scratchings on the cave wall to the detailed high-tech ‘navigator’. This is the story of human conceptions, often misconceptions, of our world. It is also a very personal story about a mapmaker’s journey through life – the exciting new perspectives and the occasional misadventures.
Over the last 5,000 years societies and empires have risen and fallen; most, if not all, attempt to record their own visions of our world. In the 15th century, Europeans developed a global reach with their oceanic ships, exploring outward into the world, revealing new possibilities, peoples and opportunities. Mapmakers recorded this journey, revealing to us a window into past triumphs and disasters. The story continues into our own day when diplomats carve up our globe, presenting what we now see as the ‘modern’ world.
In How to Draw a Map, father and son cartographers Alexander and Malcolm Swanston demonstrate the skill, creativity and care involved in the timeless art of creating maps – and what these artefacts reveal about the legion of mapmakers who went before us.
Maps have influenced humanity in many unexpected ways: life, death, sexual reproduction, espionage, war and peace. How to Draw a Map traces the story of mapmaking – cartography – from the first scratchings on the cave wall to the detailed high-tech ‘navigator’. This is the story of human conceptions, often misconceptions, of our world. It is also a very personal story about a mapmaker’s journey through life – the exciting new perspectives and the occasional misadventures.
Over the last 5,000 years societies and empires have risen and fallen; most, if not all, attempt to record their own visions of our world. In the 15th century, Europeans developed a global reach with their oceanic ships, exploring outward into the world, revealing new possibilities, peoples and opportunities. Mapmakers recorded this journey, revealing to us a window into past triumphs and disasters. The story continues into our own day when diplomats carve up our globe, presenting what we now see as the ‘modern’ world.
In How to Draw a Map, father and son cartographers Alexander and Malcolm Swanston demonstrate the skill, creativity and care involved in the timeless art of creating maps – and what these artefacts reveal about the legion of mapmakers who went before us.
288 pages, Hardcover
Published February 1, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
December 1, 2019
This is a tough one to review, I can see a lot of low ratings for this in the future. The reason for this is the misleading title "How to draw a map", I was looking forward to using the skills learnt in the book to create my own little map, alas there is nothing about creating a map, not even the basics, that is not what this book is about. Very disappointed.
Once you get over that issue you'll find this to be a very interesting book on "the history of mapmakers". The Swanston's are pretty witty too, some of their comments will give you a chuckle, especially the one about being unable to skip anymore. I love a book with a map at the beginning and this one is crammed full of wonderful maps, full of so many details, from the journeys undertaken by explorers to battle plans and maps of cities. You could spend hours pouring over them.
This book covers a huge amount of history all brief glimpses, which gives it the advantage of not smothering the reader in dates and facts. The adventures of explorers finding trade new trade routes, discovering new lands and eventually dying in barbaric scenes was the highlight for me. A lot of the darker sides of humanity are the reasons why so much effort was put into mapmaking, genocide, slavery, war, increasing an empire's territory, the better map always gave the owner the advantage in the end.
What this book could have done with was more about the work the writers do, they make historical maps, it would have been a nice ending to find out how they go about that, where do they get their information and how do they go about putting that down in map format. This book does have it's faults but is still a good learning experience.
Blog review with images: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2019...
Once you get over that issue you'll find this to be a very interesting book on "the history of mapmakers". The Swanston's are pretty witty too, some of their comments will give you a chuckle, especially the one about being unable to skip anymore. I love a book with a map at the beginning and this one is crammed full of wonderful maps, full of so many details, from the journeys undertaken by explorers to battle plans and maps of cities. You could spend hours pouring over them.
This book covers a huge amount of history all brief glimpses, which gives it the advantage of not smothering the reader in dates and facts. The adventures of explorers finding trade new trade routes, discovering new lands and eventually dying in barbaric scenes was the highlight for me. A lot of the darker sides of humanity are the reasons why so much effort was put into mapmaking, genocide, slavery, war, increasing an empire's territory, the better map always gave the owner the advantage in the end.
What this book could have done with was more about the work the writers do, they make historical maps, it would have been a nice ending to find out how they go about that, where do they get their information and how do they go about putting that down in map format. This book does have it's faults but is still a good learning experience.
Blog review with images: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2019...
January 10, 2021
An enjoyable light read and I certainly learnt some things, while having other lessons from school reinforced. However, even leaving the title aside, the book's own description of itself seems misleading. Having finished the book, I'm still unsure what it is actually about:
Certainly it is not instruction to the reader on how to draw a map, this is clear. It claims to be the story of mapmaking, yet only a very small part is specifically about this. Most of it comprises of jaunty potted histories of western explorers … who do of course encounter new understandings and features for maps but, for a book literally about maps, the lack of depth here is confusing. Entire chapters seem to have little direct mention of maps or map making . While there are a number of maps included, with numbers, they are, perhaps most bizarrely of all, not referred to directly in the text as specific figures for the reader's study (they just appear, or not, shortly after some mention of that sort of map). In any case, a proportion of the maps are obscure in black and white where multiple shades of greyscale, though distinct in the key, appear indistinct on maps. Added to the lack of direct map referencing the utter lack of continuity to guide to reader as to where the book is going or why, and it appears disjointed (at least once the core historical succession of European exploration is done with).
It's not that I wouldn't recommend it, I just don't know what I'm recommending. A number of interesting points are implicit in some of the stories told. It seems unkind not to think the authors were unaware of implications of their own writing, but why the chose to stray so little from merrily recounting who travelled where in what kind of boat to instead add meaning using their own expertise in the field, is a mystery.
Certainly it is not instruction to the reader on how to draw a map, this is clear. It claims to be the story of mapmaking, yet only a very small part is specifically about this. Most of it comprises of jaunty potted histories of western explorers … who do of course encounter new understandings and features for maps but, for a book literally about maps, the lack of depth here is confusing. Entire chapters seem to have little direct mention of maps or map making . While there are a number of maps included, with numbers, they are, perhaps most bizarrely of all, not referred to directly in the text as specific figures for the reader's study (they just appear, or not, shortly after some mention of that sort of map). In any case, a proportion of the maps are obscure in black and white where multiple shades of greyscale, though distinct in the key, appear indistinct on maps. Added to the lack of direct map referencing the utter lack of continuity to guide to reader as to where the book is going or why, and it appears disjointed (at least once the core historical succession of European exploration is done with).
It's not that I wouldn't recommend it, I just don't know what I'm recommending. A number of interesting points are implicit in some of the stories told. It seems unkind not to think the authors were unaware of implications of their own writing, but why the chose to stray so little from merrily recounting who travelled where in what kind of boat to instead add meaning using their own expertise in the field, is a mystery.
July 30, 2024
While the first half is a brief overview of the history of cartography and our understanding of spatial relation, it quickly begins to get itself bogged down in the history and biographies of explorers and what they discovered, rather than how maps developed.
Speaking of maps, they are randomly placed in between sentences with little to no context like a 1st year uni essay (lots of flicking back and forth). The grey scale for a lot of these maps are confusing, making me believe that they were meant to be published in colour.
I did, however, find the first half interesting.
Around page 190 the author stops vaguely tieing maps to history and goes on a tangent where he briefly summarises the american civil war, then the first and second world war. This pretty much comes out of the blue and shows the maps of famous battles without mentioning anything about them and they really do not do anything for the reader.
The second half is all over the place and reads like the author is writing down anything that comes to mind with no clear structure.
The book doesnt explore so many ideas I was excited for, such as: the development of satellite mapping and GIS, the exploration and mapping of Space, the Ocean depths, urban planning, changing borders, and other fun topics that would make interesting chapters. Around the 1700s almost all mention of cartography goes out the window.
Instead the book vaguely works through a chronologically muddled history of exploration and then 19/20th century warfare. Both topics are skewed through a European and American lens, with no mention of how any other people of the world developed their own cartography.
The last half of the book left me disappointed as it became high school history with maps, rather than the history of maps.
Speaking of, the phrase "'Och aye, laddie, if the Sassenachs can do it, so can we' was the view held by many canny lowlanders" (pg.190) was just a pleasure to read.
TL;DR: Misleading title, book begins with the history of cartography then goes off on a tangent summarising the American Civil War and both World Wars.
Speaking of maps, they are randomly placed in between sentences with little to no context like a 1st year uni essay (lots of flicking back and forth). The grey scale for a lot of these maps are confusing, making me believe that they were meant to be published in colour.
I did, however, find the first half interesting.
Around page 190 the author stops vaguely tieing maps to history and goes on a tangent where he briefly summarises the american civil war, then the first and second world war. This pretty much comes out of the blue and shows the maps of famous battles without mentioning anything about them and they really do not do anything for the reader.
The second half is all over the place and reads like the author is writing down anything that comes to mind with no clear structure.
The book doesnt explore so many ideas I was excited for, such as: the development of satellite mapping and GIS, the exploration and mapping of Space, the Ocean depths, urban planning, changing borders, and other fun topics that would make interesting chapters. Around the 1700s almost all mention of cartography goes out the window.
Instead the book vaguely works through a chronologically muddled history of exploration and then 19/20th century warfare. Both topics are skewed through a European and American lens, with no mention of how any other people of the world developed their own cartography.
The last half of the book left me disappointed as it became high school history with maps, rather than the history of maps.
Speaking of, the phrase "'Och aye, laddie, if the Sassenachs can do it, so can we' was the view held by many canny lowlanders" (pg.190) was just a pleasure to read.
TL;DR: Misleading title, book begins with the history of cartography then goes off on a tangent summarising the American Civil War and both World Wars.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 21, 2023
This book was an interesting read, compiling famous journeys and the lives of mapmakers as the world map was steadily developed. It's not really what I thought it would be, and while I appreciated the inclusion of Arabic mapmakers and acknowledgement of the devastation of Indigenous cultures that came about through European discovery, it still felt very much written from a Europeanean worldview. I feel that a more fascinating book would've focused on the maps themselves - how they're made, the various different types and what they mean for those who use them.
November 23, 2023
I picked this up without paying much attention to the actual contents. I expected it to detail practical methods for map making that I could translate in to classroom activities. It turned out to be more of a breezy world history of colonialism, with a slight angle on map-making as part of the process.
January 25, 2020
Interesting book that contains way more than how to draw a map. Lots of historical/geographical information. Enjoyed it thoroughly.
January 28, 2020
Wonderful history book covering the origins of cartography, exploration (of Western origin), and the development of the New World.
August 18, 2022
Hmm a very deceptive title ( probably the publisher not the authors?) but a good interesting read about the history of mapping
October 4, 2023
Not a great book if you want to learn about maps but a good one if you want to learn about white slavery??
July 15, 2024
Interesting but overall not super memorable. Also quite different than I expected...
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews