“The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime” by Miles Harvey (Broadway, 2001)

Miles Harvey is a writer for Outside magazine and it was quite some time age that he was given the assignment to write a well-researched article on cartographic crime.  Having been obsessed with maps, order, and direction from a young age, the article was written, and then Harvey began researching the same subject for a book.  In his travels he discovered one of the most notorious and recent perpetrators of cartographic crime, Gilbert Joseph Bland, Jr.  The Island of Lost Maps is this man’s story.

Recently released in paperback, the Island of Lost Maps presents a healthy mixture of the nonfiction world of cartography and the crimes committed against it, as well as fictional work with Harvey’s exploration of Bland’s life.  Harvey has had to recreate the criminal career of this enigmatic person who abhors publicity and being known for who he is.  Through meticulous research, interviews, and actual years of study, the result is a most remarkable book.

But not only is this a book about how Bland with a small razor blade would cut out maps and then proceed to steal them from prestigious libraries and later sell them.  The reader also gets a full history lesson in when many of these magnificent cartographic pieces of art were created, how they were made, and what the currently fetch on the auction block at Sotheby’s and Christie’s.  For example, just a couple years ago, a 1492 print of Ptolemy’s Geographic was auctioned at Sotheby’s (with an estimated auction range of $200-300,000) for $1,150,000.

If you liked this review and are interested in purchasing this book, click here.

Originally published on April 29th 2002.

Originally published in the Long Beach Union.

“Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West” by Stephen E.. Ambrose (Simon and Schuster, 1996)

There have been quite a few books written about the lives of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, but it is safe to say no one writes these historical biographies quite like Stephen E. Ambrose.  The advantage with reading Ambrose is you get the entire story and then some!

Ambrose does not begin with the first steps Lewis took towards the Pacific, but the many steps involved in his succession as Captain, the development of his friendship with Thomas Jefferson, and what led to Clark joining Lewis on this most historic journey.  And with the detail that Ambrose uses with Lewis and Clark’s travail across the American West, one cannot help but feel it is really taking years to get through this lengthy book.

The advantage of the audiobook is that apart from being very mobile, one feels, as they list to these well-read words, that he or she is really waling along with Lewis and Clark, listening to them chatter amongst themselves, watching as Lewis writes his journal, playing a lead role in the fights that place between the members of the party, and what led to the specific decisions that were taken.

My only complaint really would be that Ambrose goes a little too far with his depth, as the book carries on fro quite a few pages after Lewis’ suicide, to the extend that the author rehashes what he has already told the reader, and reveals points of character about Lewis that the reader certainly already knows.  Nevertheless, plowing through this book is much like the journey Lewis and Clark took: it is long and hard, but a historical journey that the reader will never forget.

If you liked this review and are interested in purchasing this book, click here.

Originally published on April 29th 2002.

Originally published in the Long Beach Union.