Brilliant Maps: An Atlas for Curious Minds

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The maps in this book explore many aspects from average female height in nations to which countries have relations with North Korea and Israel. There is also a map that displays the languages of India and the original plan for its partition. There are maps of trading partners and countries with a GPD greater than California. Wright presents an informative and entertaining look at the political, cultural, economic, and geographical aspects of our planet using only maps and legends. It's an interesting book, showing a number of interesting and surprising map-based statistics like who drives on which side of the road or what countries lost the most people in each world war or how much sunlight does each country get? A lot of good stuff. A pity it wasn't presented a bit better. These North American maps didn't excite me quite as much as those in the related Brilliant…, but that’s not to say it was hard to find favorites. In the foreword, Wright explained that he defined "popular" as "the most talked-about maps, the ones that seemed especially to strike a nerve with readers." Some of these maps went viral. Unsurprisingly, maps having to do with politics and national identity were some of the most popular over the last five years. Which countries have had a female leader in the last 50 years and how long was a female the head of the government

Data was unclear. It’s definitely more for entertainment than for information. One of the maps, for example, shows different statistics, each in a shade of pink. Okay, it’s a very pretty map, but I have no idea which of the 6 or so almost-identical shades I’m looking at for any given country. Cute, but not helpful. There were several like this, where the data was illegible. Which nations have North Korean embassies? How many countries have bigger economies than California? Who drives on the “wrong” side of the road? And where can you find lions in the wild? Graphics can be powerful in getting across important information and I love how Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds relays information so effectively without being at all text-heavy. I wish this were a never-ending book. I'm sure other map-lovers would feel exactly the same.

Other Popular Maps

This book will be published in November. It would be a fantastic gift book for the winter holidays. It would also make a great coffee table book, bet settler, and conversation starter. ("Hey, did y'all know California, all by itself, is one of the world's biggest economies?"). Having access to maps on the internet is nice. But as the little girl I used to be knew, sometimes it's nice to look at them in a book. Sources for the data: Sources and latest available data: UK Census (2011), destatis.de (2019), Eurostat (2019), Russian Registrar (2019), dmsu.gov.ua (2019), scb.se (2019), Irish Census (2016), demo.istat.it (2019), opendata.cbs.nl (2019), ssb.no (2019), statbank.dk (2020), stat.fi (2019), migracje.gov.pl (2018) and ine.es (2019). In Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds, you’ll learn all this and much more. One hundred visually arresting maps strike a balance between sobering analysis (number of executions by state) and whimsical insight (the countries of the world where there aren’t any McDonald’s).

As you might expect, the maps range in appeal or interest. It turns out that sometimes the most obscure facts or the most unlikely lists lead to the most unexpected insights. (Consider how states have changed from red to blue or blue to red over the years.) In any event there is more than enough here to inform and entertain, and that is, after all, the point. Now, using the “exact” proportion of sub-Saharan and Caribbean (in the case of Netherlands/UK) descended

This simple book serves the schoolroom for all ages, the coffee table of any household, the shelf in any library, and a font of wonderfulness for any trivia gamer.” — New York Journal of Books There is a lot more that I could say here, but I don’t want to take away from the pleasure of discovering it for yourself. Grouped into broad categories (culture and customs, history, nature, etc.), these maps cover topics serious and less so . . . Whether browsing or looking for report inspiration, this visual, trivia-filled offering will get teens thinking outside the box.”— Booklist There are a zillion ways to present data graphically - from straightforward x/y graphs to wildly creative artistic renderings. This book hews to the middle path and succeeds admirably. There's just so much data that can be presented on a map. My husband and I had Valentine's Day dinner at home, and is there any greater testament to the patience he has for me than the fact that he let me pull out this book when we finished eating and explain my very favorite maps to him?