Map Addict by Mike Parker

Map Addict cover

'My name is Mike and I am a map addict. There, it's said …'


Map Addict
really catches the current mood regarding all things cartographic. Recently, there has been a huge growth in mapping on the web, creating massive interest in maps and their application. Mike's book has just been published by Collins, with some mapping information and assistance provided by ‘their cartographic crew in Glasgow’.  Map Addict includes comments on Bartholomews (now Collins Geo) and Times Atlases.

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.

Mike Parker is 'a marvellous guide: enthusiastic, generous and lucid', Jan Morris.

'An historical aside from Mike Parker is worth a monograph from others', New Welsh Review.

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