Megalocartographia!

I have an unusual obsession with maps which originated, I believe, with the American Automobile Association. All those summer trips to Nebraska to visit my grandparents when I was young were fueled by AAA Triptiks. (Anyone else remember those paper versions?) I would study the magic-marker-highlighted routes contained in those neat spiral-bound notebooks so intently that I would miss all the scenery happening outside my back-seat window on our midwestern treks. Triptiks were my guide to the world and I loved them!

This map mania has continued into my adult life: I curse when our protective library tape, which seals the book jacket to the book, covers any map pasted to the endpapers. I need full access to that map and its secrets! I cannot go to the L.L. Bean Store in Freeport without a side trip to the Delorme Map Store (and its giant globe) in nearby Yarmouth. In July, I watched every Tour de France stage on TV each evening and had to follow along with my official “Tour de France” route map, printed from their website, close by my side.

Recently I was very excited to read a review of a new book (coming out November 3) called 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 by Toby Lester. It’s about the re-discovery, in 1901, of the long lost Waldseemuller Map, created ca. 1507 in Europe.

This is the first map to show the New World as a separate continent, the first to use the word “America” to name it, and the first map to suggest the existence of the Pacific Ocean. It’s now in the Library of Congress, having been purchased in 2008 for $10 million! Toby Lester’s book will detail the map’s creation and its history, and trace its long journey to America.

In case there are other map-obsessive people out there, here’s my short list of other great map-inspired novels and non-fiction:
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen. (2009). Illustrated by a 12-year old map prodigy on a cross-country trip to the Smithsonian. (fiction)
The Map Thief by Heather Terrell. (2008) An art sleuth searches for a rare Chinese map. (fiction)
The Island of Lost Maps: a True Story of Cartographic Crime by Miles Harvey. (2000) Art thief Gilbert Bland’s robberies from 22 academic libraries’ map collections.
Mapping the World by Ralph E. Ehrenberg. (2006) Wonderful National Geographic illustrated history of cartography.
Putting “America” on the Map: the Story of the Most Important Graphic Document in the History of the United States by Seymour I. Schwartz. (2007) A similar tale to Lester’s forthcoming book.
Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon’s Secret World by Trevor Paglen. (2009) All the places Dick Cheney knows about!
How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein. (2008) Why Oklahoma has that panhandle and West Virginia those two odd bump-outs.
Mercator: the Man Who Mapped the Planet by Nicholas Crane. (2003) Mercator’s 16th century theory of “projection” is still used today by NASA!

Now the bad news: you know all those recent reports about how texting while driving causes more accidents? Well, I don’t text, but we did just buy a portable GPS for the car. We call her Gertie and she loves showing me maps and routes on her little screen as I drive along. You might not want to drive too close when I’m mapping!