Book #72: Maphead by Ken Jennings

You might recognize Ken Jennings as the famous Mormon Jeopardy! champion from the mid-2000s (although Tommy had no idea who he was; he said, "Isn't he that ABC news guy in Utah?"), and I'll admit, that was probably one of the main reasons this book stood out to me from random summer reading lists I saw. But I also thought that this topic was probably super interesting as well, honestly. I wouldn't say I'm absolutely terrible with geography--I'm not one of those college kids who couldn't point out Chicago on the map (something that Jennings talks a bit about), but I also couldn't for the life of me tell you where Tanzania is or distinguish between the Guinea countries. But there are people out there who love maps--LOVE maps and LOVE geography and everything to do with it--and they know much more than just having memorized the state and country capitals around the world. Geography is so much more than that--it's studying everything ABOUT those countries as well.

Jennings started writing about this topic because he was a map geek as a kid, always interested in looking through atlases and learning about maps. It turns out that Ken Jennings is a really good author with a knack for involving his own voice in somewhat dry material and making it very personalized to him and interesting to us. I thought the idea behind this book--that maps are awesome, basically--was pretty fun, but I wondered how Jennings intended to write an entire book about it. He basically follows the similar format of other non-fiction writers (like in Traffic and American Wasteland) where he has his main topic, and each chapter focuses on a smaller aspect of that topic while he interviews people, goes on field trips, gets really into that one thing, and then moves on. The chapters in Maphead focus on things like geocaching, the National Geography Bee (the less famous cousin of the National Spelling Bee, and admittedly much more impressive-sounding for that the kids learn), antique map sales, fantasy fiction maps and the purposes they serve, and more. Jennings goes to all sorts of interesting places and talks to uber-obsessed geography people (like the subtitle says, "geography wonks"), and I admit, it's a whole world of people that I really have never known anything about. But I am motivated to learn more--at least with nothing else, by buying a map for our house. (Let me tell you--reading this book is totally motivating me to want to buy a huge world map and hang it on our wall! Ikea has a really cool big one, but it's pretty expensive. We'll definitely need to wait until we move into a real house before we buy stuff like that.) I am also pretty interested in reading Jennings' other book, because I imagine it is probably at least as entertaining as this one, so I bet it's pretty good.