Apr

01st 2008

Atlas of Hogwarts

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If you’re getting antsy waiting for the latest film version of the popular Harry Potter series to come out you can always wander over to Steve Vander Ark’s Harry Potter Lexicon site and explore the various maps created by fans relating to the Harry Potter books.  Included is an image capturing the author’s hand drawn map of Hogwarts.

Mar

24th 2008

Tellings Stories Geographically

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Penguin Books has launched a new feature entitled “We Tell Stories.“  With the tagline “Six Authors.  Six Stories.  Six Weeks”, the site uses Google Maps to take the reader through the geography of each short stories.  The first week’s offering is a short story called “21 Steps” by Charles Cumming (inspired by the book “39 Steps” by John Buchan.  Each week there will be a new short story played out over Google Maps. 

Seen via Google’s Lat Long Blog

Dec

31st 2007

Geography of Bliss

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cover_geography_bliss.jpgWhat makes different people in different countries happy?  Eric Weiner takes on this task in his travelogue ”The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World.”  As Eric Weiner explains in the opening of his book, he took off on a world journey to, ”I hoped, find some happiness along the way. I’ve always believed that happiness is just around the corner. The trick is finding the right corner.”  The book takes the reader through ten of the happiest and least happiest places one earth in an attempt to tweak out what makes people happy.  The NY Times has published an excerpt from the first few pages for those that want to experience a taste of the author’s style before checking out the entire book.   

Dec

02nd 2007

Oxford Atlas of the World

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oxford.jpgThe best way to learn about the world is to sit down with a high quality atlas and travel through the pages.  Some of my favorite memories as a child were those sitting with my father, browsing through an atlas and learning about geography.  Oxford University Press recently issued the fourteenth edition of their celebrated Oxford Atlas of the World.  At the beginning of the tome is a ”User Guide” which provides the reader with a basic and necessary overview on using the atlas and interpreting the maps.  The “Images of the World” section contains phenomenal satellite imagery from around the world.  Each image is annotated to describe the region as well as providing a map reference page.   The maps in the main atlas section are heavily detailed to provide annotation for names of places, waterways and notable sites.  Each page has a helpful thumbnail at the top of the page so you can situate the smaller scale map with its location in the region.  The atlas goes beyond mapping with several segments providing statistics and baseline information about each country.  There is a section entitled “World Geography” which actually goes beyond the Earth to provide information about the universe and our solar system in addition to reviewing a plethora of geography subjects such as climatology, biogeography, demographics and urban geography.  The Conflict and Cooperation section contains a map of the wars since 1945 with current conflicts symbolized in red.  The socioeconomic sections are equally as impressive with maps showing infant mortality, Gender Development Index and global fund consumption.  With the quantity and quality of information presented in the Oxford World Atlas you could peruse this volume every day for a year and learn something new every time.