Maphead Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks

It comes as no surprise that, as a kid, Jeopardy! legend Ken Jennings slept with a bulky Hammond world atlas by his pillow every night. Maphead recounts his lifelong love affair with geography and explores why maps have always been so fascinating to him and to fellow enthusiasts everywhere.Jennings takes readers on a world tour of geogeeks from the London Map Fair to the bowels of the Library of Congress, from the prepubescent geniuses at the National Geographic Bee to the computer programmers at Google Earth. Each chapter delves into a different aspect of map culture: highpointing, geocaching, road atlas rallying, even the "unreal estate" charted on the maps of fiction and fantasy. He also considers the ways in which cartography has shaped our history, suggesting that the impulse to make and read maps is as relevant today as it has ever been. From the "Here be dragons" parchment maps of the Age of Discovery to the spinning globes of grade school to the postmodern revolution of digital maps and GPS, Maphead is filled with intriguing details, engaging anecdotes, and enlightening analysis. If you're an inveterate map lover yourselfor even if you're among the cartographically clueless who can get lost in a supermarketlet Ken Jennings be your guide to the strange world of mapheads.

Ken Jennings is die author of Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs, about his record-breaking 2004 appearance on the quiz show Jeopardy!, as well as Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac: 8,883 Questions in 365 Days. He lives outside Seattle, Washington, with his wife, Mindy, their two kids, and a deeply unstable Labrador retriever named Banjo.