Maphead

I found a good used copy of Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks, by Ken Jennings, in a Little Free Library in my neighborhood. The book called to me since I’m a map lover. Maphead was published in 2011 but is only a little out of date. The book is breezy, lively, well written, well researched (with end notes), and entertaining.

When I was in the tenth grade, a friend introduced me to The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. I spent many inspired hours studying the maps of the Shire and of Middle-earth. I also own a copy of The Atlas of Middle-earth by Karen Wynn Fonstad.

I enjoy studying road maps, and I remember spending a lot of time the summer of 1972 planning an elaborate bicycle tour from Portland, Oregon, down the Pacific coast to San Francisco, using road maps as my guide. (I never made the tour.) Now I have many bicycle touring maps produced by the Adventure Cycling Association.

In the first chapter, Jennings describes his fascination with maps, a fascination that began at an early age. I, too, went through this stage, and I have always enjoyed maps. Jennings writes:

Why did maps mean so much to me? Maps are just a way of organizing information, after all—not normally the kind of thing that spawns obsessive fandom. I’ve never heard anyone profess any particular love for the Dewey Decimal System. I’ve never met a pie-chart geek. I suppose indexes are good at what they do, but do they inspire devotion?

I will comment here that when I worked in the school library in the eighth grade, I was fascinated by the Dewey Decimal System. I doubt there are pie-chart geeks, but there are many people devoted to graphs and charts (Philip Bump, formerly of the Washington Post, comes to mind). Finally, I am married to a professional indexer who is devoted to indexes and has the books about indexing to prove it.

Chapter 4 discusses place names, with the usual collection of offensive and humorous names; the naming of mountains after presidents, nobility, and what have you; and the naming of America. Jennings writes, on page 72:

It’s hard for Americans to understand the patriotism that can get bound up in place-names. We’re a young country. We’re also accustomed, in our cockeyed cowboy fashion, to everything else revolving around us, so we can afford to let slide the fact that, say, the Gulf of Mexico isn’t called the Gulf of America.

In 2025, President Donald Trump ordered that the United States call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

In Chapter 6, Jennings writes about imaginary worlds and their maps, and he reaches Tolkien’s Middle-earth on pages 114–116.

This is an outline of topics by chapter:

• Chapter 1: what a maphead is
• Chapter 2: navigation
• Chapter 3: geography and why we should teach it in schools
• Chapter 4: the Library of Congress map collection
• Chapter 5: collecting antique maps
• Chapter 6: imaginary worlds and maps
• Chapter 7: the National Geographic geography contest for schoolchildren
• Chapter 8: traveler’s bucket lists
• Chapter 9: road scholars (pun intended)
• Chapter 10: GPS and geocaching
• Chapter 11: digital maps, paper maps
• Chapter 12: degree confluence points; Earth sandwich

This was terminology new to me:

• choropleth map
• hachure map

My rating: Four stars, very good.