The Mapmakers by John Noble Wilford

Good textbooky overview of cartography up to the year 2000

A long-time science writer and editor for the New York Times, John Noble Wilford wrote the famous front-page article “Men Walk on Moon” back in 1969. Since then, he has won two Pulitzer Prizes for his science journalism. Wilford has also authored several books, among them The Mapmakers, first published in 1981. I read the revised edition of 2000. Judging from what I see on Amazon, I don’t believe it has been updated since then.

In The Mapmakers, Wilford chronicles the landmark achievements in cartography from ancient times to the present. If you’ve ever wondered how maps were made back in the days of sextants and theodolites, or how they are made today in the era of satellite technology, The Mapmakers is a great resource loaded with valuable information. Wilford follows the development of cartographic methods and technology from ancient geometry to today’s GPS systems, while highlighting the groundbreaking achievements of explorers and cartographers such as Ptolemy, Mercator, the Cassini family, Captain James Cook, and many other lesser-known but important luminaries in the field of mapmaking. In the 2000 edition, Wilford touches on digital technology and GIS (Geographic Information Systems), but he’s still talking about floppy disks, and he doesn’t even mention the internet. If you want to learn about current cartographic techniques, this is not an up-to-date text on the subject. As a history book, however, it does a very fine job of providing a comprehensive overview of the history of cartography through the 20th century.

I took an undergraduate intro to cartography course at a university, and this would have made a good textbook for such a course. In fact, it reads very much like a textbook, for better or for worse. The text never quite reaches the attention-grabbing, accessible prose one expects from popular science journalism. The first half of the book recounts the voyages of many explorers, stories that just about anyone interested in geography can appreciate and enjoy. The second half of the book, however, details a succession of technological advances in radar, remote sensing, and space technology that requires a reader that’s more of a cartography wonk. Though suitable for general readers, one really has to have more than just a passing interest in this subject, and perhaps some prior knowledge, in order to fully understand and appreciate this cartographic history, particularly the mathematics involved.

That said, I would fall among those interested parties for whom this book is well-suited, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I was familiar with many of the people and achievements recounted here, but Wilford fleshed out their stories with interesting details. There was also plenty of content that was new to me. Wilford doesn’t just cover the mapping of the Earth, but also the mapping of the Moon, Mars, and interstellar space. Of course, a lot of advances have been made in those areas since 2000, but again, this is a very good history up to that point. The Mapmakers succeeds as a one-volume overview and reference on the history of cartography. By providing detailed coverage of a broad and deep range of mapmaking pioneers, achievements, and techniques, this book allows curious readers to decide which topics and historical personages are worthy of further research.  

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