Mak, Geert "The Dream of Europe"

Mak, Geert "The Dream of Europe. Travels in a Troubled Continent" (Dutch: Grote verwachtingen. In Europa 1999-2019) - 2019

This book was a present by my son for Christmas. While I usually try to read Dutch books in Dutch, this was an English edition. In the end, I was not unhappy about that because now I can pass it on to my sons. They both speak Dutch but wouldn't read such a large book in that language.

I have read a few book by this fantastic journalist and author. All of them having to do with the changes of our continent in modern times. Totally interesting and very well examined and described.

He wrote this book six years ago and he predicted many events that are true today. That shows how well he observes. This can be seen as a follow-up to "In Europe. Travels through the Twentieth Century". A very-well deserved and very well executed follow-up. His observations about the first twenty years of our century are shocking and frightening. We should listen what he has to say about the future.

And here are some important quotes (from many):

"I wrote Enraged Citizens to show how it ought to be. The Capital (Die Hauptstadt)  is what it actually is." Robert Menasse

"But let all those idiots gather together in politics without sufficient resistance of any kind and you get a dictatorship of idiocy". Jacques de Kadt, Dutch essayist, in 1936

"He [one of the Republican candidates in 2015] lacked even the most basic respect for facts, institutions and democratic principles. To him, political opponents were enemies, a compromise was not a dignified agreement but a capitulation …" Doesn’t that apply to all of them???

From the back cover:

'Mak is the history teacher everyone should have had' Financial Times

How did the great European dream turn sour? And where do we go from here? From the author of the internationally acclaimed In Europe, a stunning history of our present,examining the first two decades of this most fragile and fraught new millennium. The great European project was built out of a common desire for peace, prosperity and freedom; a wish for a united Europe striving towards a common goal. The EU was to set an an arena for close cooperation, tackling crucial shared concerns from climate change to organized crime, promoting open borders and social security. But the first two turbulent decades of this century have been times of rapid and profound change. From the shores of Lampedusa to Putin's Moscow, the continent threatens to tear itself apart. What's happened to Europe's optimism and euphoria? How has it given way to nostalgia, frustration and fear, the fragile European dream in danger of turning into a nightmare?

In The Dream of Europe, Geert Mak, one of Europe's best-loved commentators, charts the seismic events that have shaped people's lives over the past twenty years. Mak's monumental book In Europe defined the continent on the verge of a new millennium. The Dream of Europe brings us up to the present day, through the rocky expansion of the EU, the aftermath of 9/11 and terrorist attacks across Europe, the 2008 financial crash and the euro crisis, the tragedy of the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean, the rise of right-wing populism and Brexit.

Like no other, Mak blends history, politics and culture with the stories and experiences of the many Europeans he meets on his travels. He brings this continent to life, and asks what role does Europe play now, and how might we face our challenges together, in the spirit of solidarity and connection.

'A powerful, humane and serious mind' Guardian

'Mak is a truly cosmopolitan chronicler' Independent"

Dorling Kindersley "Brussels"

Dorling Kindersley (Hewetson, Zöe) "Brussels. Bruges, Ghent & Antwerp" - 2000
A Dorling Kindersley Travel Guide

One of the DK Travel Guides I have used frequently. Brussels is my favourite city. I have lived there. I have met my husband there. We have been going more than once every year since we moved away and now our youngest son lives there, right in the area where my husband and I met.

I love the Eyewitness Guides and also their little sister, The Travel Guides. Even if you are not able to visit a city (or a country), you can see exactly what it looks like and get a lot of information about the town, the people, the buildings, the parks, the museums, the food, just about everything you would like to know about a certain place.

The guide is divided into the areas of the city: the Lower Town, the Upper Town, Greater Brussels, Beyond Brussels, it gives you all the information a traveller needs: Where to stay, restaurants, cafés and bars, Shopping in Brussels, there is a survival guide with practical and travel information, everything you need to know.

Brussels is such a beautiful city with so many historic places, it's hard to know where to begin. A must is definitely the Grand Place with all its picturesque guild houses. You certainly can't miss this. It's beautiful to sit in one of the restaurants and observe the bustling life around you. But we usually just have a coffee there and go for dinner in one of the cheaper places just off the market or in another quarter, the food is so much better, as well.

In every even year, there is a flower carpet on the Grand Place, always around Assumption Day (of Mary, 15 August), a national holiday in Belgium.

One place we visit almost every time is the Cinquantenaire which is close by my old living place. There's a beautiful parc and a palace built by Leopold II on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary (cinquantenaire) of Belgium. Him being German, he based the memorial arcade on the Brandenburg Gate but it also looks like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

Then there's the Quartier Royal with its Royal Palace and the Parc de Bruxelles, one of the most beautiful parcs you can imagine. And, of course, lots of wonderful museums for anyone interested in art and history. The palace is open to the public in the summer. Definitely worth another visit.

And there are places you should visit, if you happen to be in Brussels for longer or at a certain time. First of all, the symbol of Brussels, the Atomium, originally constructed as the centrepiece of the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (Expo 58). Definitely worth it, especially since its renovation about two decades ago. Six of the spheres are accessible to the public and they show permanent as well as temporary exhibitions on the 50s, the Expo, the construction as well as modern art or anything of current interest.

Then there are the Royal Greenhouses of Laeken which are open to the public once a year for two weeks in April/May.

You can also do tours around Brussels to admire the Art Nouveau houses, doors, windows, entrances (you can get a cheap map at the info centre at the Grand Place). There is also such a map for all the comic related street art. Tintin and his friends are all over the place. And if you arrive at the Gare Central (central station) and leave the place, don't forget to look up when you pass under the passage of the Putterie.

Brussels also has beautiful metro stations, a ride on the metro is always interesting.

There is so much more to see that it is impossible to write in just one post. You will have to go and see for yourself why I love this town so much.

Of course, all the other cities mentioned in the title and the book are also very much worth visiting.

Book description:

"Highlights Lower Town, Upper Town, Greater Brussels, as well as sited beyond the city.

Recognized the world over by frequent flyers and armchair travelers alike, Eyewitness Travel Guides are the most colorful and comprehensive guides on the market. With beautiful commissioned photographs and spectacular 3-D aerial views revealing the charm of each destination, these amazing travel guides show what others only tell.

'DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Brussels, Bruges, Ghent & Antwerp' is your indispensable guide to this beautiful part of the world. The fully updated guide includes unique cutaways, floor plans and reconstructions of the must-see sights, plus street-by-street maps. The also is packed with photographs and illustrations leading you straight to the best attractions these cities offer.

With insider tips and essential local information, this uniquely visual DK Eyewitness Travel guide highlights everything you'll need to know to make your vacation special, from local festivals and markets to day trips around the countryside. Detailed listings will guide you to the best hotels, restaurants, bars, and shops for all budgets, while practical information will help you to get around by train, bus, or car.

'DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Brussels, Bruges, Ghent & Antwerp' will help you effortlessly explore every corner of Brussels, Bruges, Ghent & Antwerp."

Frankopan, Peter "The Silk Roads"

Frankopan, Peter "The Silk Roads. A New History of the World" - 2015

I love books about the part of the world where the silk roads used to be. So, I bought this book without much looking at it because it sounded like it would be the right one for me.

And it was. But there is so much more to this book than just the history of the Orient. The subtitle is "A new history of the world" and that is exactly what this is. It makes us understand a lot of the contemporary problems. It makes you really grasp our current situation.

When we learn history at school that is before the 20th century, it is mostly Greece and Rome that seems to be interesting to us. Who teaches us about Persia and Ancient China and all the other cultures that had a huge impact on us Europeans. We were so unimportant for a long, long time. We were only at the edge of the world, nothing much was going on here, nobody cared about those "barbarians" in the West.

So, this is not just a history of the Silk Roads, it's a history of everything. He goes on into the present day with some interesting views about last century's wars. More or less, he explains how we got into the trouble we are today. And if we're honest, we have to accept the fact that we are quite culpable of it ourselves.

You can tell that the author is a history professor, he really knows his stuff and knows how to present it, how to bring it across to readers, even if they have not much knowledge about history.

This book is not just supported through many pictures, every single chapter, and may it be ever so little, has its own map that shows you exactly where this part of the book took place and what the earth looked back then. Totally interesting.

If it didn't come out through my description, yet, I loved this book. It's great.

From the back cover:

"For centuries, fame and fortune were to be found in the west - in the New World of the Americas. Today, it is the east which calls out to those in search of riches and adventure. Sweeping right across Central Asia and deep into China and India, a region that once took centre stage is again rising to dominate global politics, commerce and culture.

A major reassessment of world history, The Silk Roads is a dazzling exploration of the forces that have driven the rise and fall of empires, determined the flow of ideas and goods and are now heralding a new dawn in international affairs."

Eyewitness Guide Paris

Eyewitness Guide Paris
Top 10 Paris (DK Eyewitness Travel Guides)

It's Paris in July month. Since we can't travel there in real life, we travel online.

What do we need for any trip? That's right, a map and a guide book. So, that's where I begin my month of travelling to and through Paris.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love Dorling Kindersley? Probably about a hundred times. They publish wonderful books and we have lots of them in the house and one of their Eyewitness Guide on every town and country we have visited since we discovered them about thirty years ago.

Now, with a big city like Paris, we have two choices. First, there is the big "Eyewitness Guide" (*), a beautiful book with pretty illustrations that make you believe you stand in the middle of a street and can start admiring the places already (see left picture and picture in the middle - the oldest and the newest edition). It shows so many details, gives wonderful explanations and doesn't let you miss a thing you might want to see.

It is also a brilliant non-fiction book to read, at least the first half. They give you so much information about the city itself, its history and many more interesting little tidbits. The very first edition was even advertised for "frequent flyers and armchair travelers alike".

(*) Eyewitness Guide by Alan Tillier, Anna Brooke (1993) and by DK Publishing (2020).

Top Ten
by Anna Brooke, Mike Gerrard, Donna Dailey, Paul Hines

At one point, they started the "Top 10" books. They are a lot smaller than the other ones and easy to put into your bag while walking through the city. It doesn't have the nice drawings for every single "quartier" as the original big one has but it's the best guide to the city. If you can afford it, get both, leave the large one in the hotel and take the small on your excursions. (see right picture)

From the back covers:

Eyewitness Guide:

"Discover Paris - a city synonymous with art, fashion, gastronomy, and culture.

Whether you want to be awed by iconic landmarks, lose yourself in the Louvre, or shop till you drop, your DK Eyewitness travel guide makes sure you experience all that Paris has to offer.

Paris is a treasure trove of things to see and do. Packed full of world-famous palaces, museums, and galleries, the city shines with opulence and elegance. But Parisians know that there is more to life than glitz and glamour. Simpler pleasures are offered in abundance - think tiny winding streets, quirky old bookshops, and centuries-old cafés.

Our annually updated guide brings Paris to life, transporting you there like no other travel guide does with expert-led insights and advice, detailed breakdowns of all the must-see sights, photographs on practically every page, and our hand-drawn illustrations which place you inside the city's iconic buildings and neighbourhoods.

You'll discover:

- our pick of Paris' must-sees, top experiences, and hidden gems
- the best spots to eat, drink, shop, and stay
- detailed maps and walks which make navigating the country easy
- easy-to-follow itineraries
- expert advice: get ready, get around, and stay safe
- colour-coded chapters to every part of Paris, from Champs-Élysées to Belleville, Montmartre to Montparnasse
- our new lightweight format, so you can take it with you wherever you go

Want the best of Paris in your pocket? Try our Top 10 Paris for top 10 lists to all-things Paris."

Top Ten:

"With a new design and unbeatable price, DK raises the bar on travel guides with its new Top 10 Travel Guide series. Whether on business or vacation, take the work out of planning any trip with DK's Top 10 Travel Guides. Building on the success of the Eyewitness Travel Guides, DK has created a new series that makes finding the best every destination has to offer even easier than before. Whether searching for the finest cuisine or cheapest places to eat, the most luxurious hotels or best deals on places to stay, the coolest family destination or hottest nightspot, the Top 10 format allows travelers to use the insights of experts to make the most of their vacation. Accompanied by a companion website, readers can share their experiences and vote for their own personal Top 10s."

For those, who don't read through all the comments, my blogger friend Lectrice just added a link to the Dorling Kindersley page where you can get a closer look into the book.

Marshall, Tim "Divided"

Marshall, Tim "Divided: Why We're Living in an Age of Walls" (aka "The Age of Walls. How Barriers Between Nations Are Changing Our World") - 2018

Build bridges - not walls. That is the message of this book.

It combines my main interests, geography, history and politics. I grew up in a country that was divided by a wall and even though I lived on the "free" side of that wall, it had a huge impact on all our lives. Needless to say, I am against all of those walls that are described in this book.

Granted, the author describes many of the problems in this world in about 300 pages.  I doubt that he wants to give the full picture with all the details. But if you have no idea about all the walls being built in this world and think the one in your country is the only one, you can learn a lot from this.

Same as the Berlin Wall, a lot of those borders stem from foreign intervention (interference), sometimes colonies, sometimes other political upheavals. We all know the Chinese Wall, the one in Berlin, the one between the US and Mexico, the one in Israel/Palestine. But how many of us have ever heard about other walls in the Middle East or Africa? Or that there are still walls in Africa? Morocco for instance? Why is Sahrawi not a country? Why are there still walls in Belfast?

Tim Marshall also quotes David Goodhart who in his book "The Road to Somewhere" explains that people today are divided into "Anywheres" and "Somewheres". While the Anywheres usually have left their home town and not only travelled the world but also lived abroad, the Somewheres live within a short distance of their birthplace and are less open to changes. Interesting concept. I suppose, having lived in four different countries, I definitely belong to the former group.

Every chapter is preceded by a quote about freedom and a picture of a wall.

These are my two favourite quotes:
"Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption." Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

"The forces that unite us are intrinsic and greater than the superimposed influences that keep us apart." Kwame Nkrumah

And there are plenty of maps within the chapters to explain where the walls are.

So, this is a great book that helps you understand the divisions in today's world.

From the back cover:

"Tim Marshall, author of the international bestseller Prisoners of Geography, returns to the arena of global affairs, combining keen analysis of current events with world history as he examines the borders, walls, and boundaries that shape our world in book three of his Politics of Place series.

We feel more divided than ever.

This riveting analysis tells you why.

Walls are going up. Nationalism and identity politics are on the rise once more. Thousands of miles of fences and barriers have been erected in the past ten years, and they are redefining our political landscape.

There are many reasons why we erect walls, because we are divided in many ways: wealth, race, religion, politics. In Europe the ruptures of the past decade threaten not only European unity, but in some countries liberal democracy itself. In China, the Party’s need to contain the divisions wrought by capitalism will define the nation’s future. In the USA the rationale for the Mexican border wall taps into the fear that the USA will no longer be a white majority country in the course of this century.

Understanding what has divided us, past and present, is essential to understanding much of what’s going on in the world today. Covering China; the USA; Israel and Palestine; the Middle East; the Indian Subcontinent; Africa; Europe and the UK, bestselling author Tim Marshall presents a gripping and unflinching analysis of the fault lines that will shape our world for years to come."

I definitely want to read his two other books (and any he should write on those subjects in future) of his "Politics of Place" series:

"Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics"

"Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags"

Campbell, Jen "The Bookshop Book"

Campbell, Jen "The Bookshop Book" - 2014

This book starts with:
"Bookshops are
time machines
spaceships
story-makers
secret-keepers
dragon-tamers
dream-catchers
fact-finders
& safe places.
(this book is for those who know this to be true)"

Every reader loves bookshops as much as books. That's my theory and I stick to it. I am one of those people who cannot pass by a bookshop and who cannot leave a bookshop without buying at least one book. I have no problem leaving other shops without a purchase but it's impossible when entering a bookshop.

Lately, I have read some other books about bookshops:
Rice, Ronald (Ed.) "My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop" - 2012
Taylor, Andrew James "Books That Changed the World" - 2008

This is yet another approach to discovering bookshops. The author has more or less travelled around the world for us, interviewed bookshop owners, employees, authors, readers, anyone who has anything to do with producing and consuming books. Granted, she describes more shops in the UK and the US than in all the other parts of the world together but it still is a pleasure to follow her around. She describes all sorts of exotic places that I doubt I will ever get to, like Cambodia and Mongolia, Sudan and Tanzania, bookshops in North and South America, Australasia, wherever you can find one, she found them. If there were a bookshop on the moon, it would get a mention in here.

The stories about the people are all wonderful - what's not to like about book lovers? For example, there is Jessica A. Fox from the States who wanted to visit a second-hand bookshop in Scotland, googled it, found  and visited one (The Bookshop in Wigtown). Apparently, we can read all about her falling in love with the owner in "Three Things You Need To Know About Rockets: A Real-Life Scottish Fairy Tale".

I would love to visit all of those bookstores but there is one I have been visiting lots of times. Every time we have a visitor in our area, we take them to Maastricht to go into Selexyz Dominicanen. Imagine the surprise when people enter a church and end up in a books hop. Definitely visit their website. And let me know when you're in the area, I always love to meet other book nerds.

For anyone who loves boats more than books - or at least just as much - the Book Barge in Lichfield seems to be the answer. The owner, Sarah Henshaw, also wrote a book about her adventures. "The Bookshop That Floated Away". But she also describes bookshops that distributed their goods on donkeys or tanks.

Then there's the story about Stephen Fowler from Toronto who created the Biblio-Mat in his bookshop "The Monkey's Paw" where you can buy a second hand book for $2 with the promise: "Every book a surprise. No two alike. Collect all 112 million titles". Their most loyal customer Vincent bought one book every week in 2013 and he did not just read it but also wrote a review on his blog therandombookmachine.com. Certainly a site worth looking into.

I also loved the way she describes how different kind of bookshops organize their books. My favourite would be the one where the cover all the books face the customer. But there are all sorts of different set-ups. In Japan, there is a shop that sorts the books by date, not of publication but of the period in which it is set.

The author also recommends books to read, these were my two favourites:
Gowdy, Barbara "The White Bone", a journey into the minds of elephants - my favourite animals!
Berthoud, Ella; Elderkin, Susan "The Novel Cure" - a novel for any ailment you might have.
I know I must put both of them on my wish list.

The book is also full of quotes. I particularly loved this one:
"A good bookshop shows you the books that you never knew you wanted. It doesn't merely fulfill your desires, it expands them. It you know the book you want, go into a bookshop and buy it, you have failed." Mark Forsyth

So, whether you like to read about books, bookshops or see some amazing pictures of some weird and not so weird places, this is a fantastic book to delve into.

From the back cover:

"Every bookshop has a story.

We’re not talking about rooms that are just full of books. We’re talking about bookshops in barns, disused factories, converted churches and underground car parks. Bookshops on boats, on buses, and in old run-down train stations. Fold-out bookshops, undercover bookshops, this-is-the-best-place-I’ve-ever-been-to-bookshops.

Meet Sarah and her Book Barge sailing across the sea to France; meet Sebastien, in Mongolia, who sells books to herders of the Altai mountains; meet the bookshop in Canada that’s invented the world’s first antiquarian book vending machine.

And that’s just the beginning.

From the oldest bookshop in the world, to the smallest you could imagine, The Bookshop Book examines the history of books, talks to authors about their favourite places, and looks at over three hundred weirdly wonderful bookshops across six continents (sadly, we’ve yet to build a bookshop down in the South Pole).

The Bookshop Book is a love letter to bookshops all around the world."

Taylor, Andrew James "Books That Changed the World"

Taylor, Andrew James "Books That Changed the World" - 2008

What an interesting list of books! A list of important books that made a major impact on our present view of the world. I haven't read all of them but I am sure most people have heard the titles and the authors at some point in their life.

Whether Andrew Taylor mentions the Bible or the Qur'an, Marx's Communist Manifesto (Das kommunistische Manifest) or Mao's Little Red Book, you can be sure that millions of people have read and followed those writings.
Then there are the scientific books like Darwin's "On the Origin of Species", the writings by Galileo, Newton, Einstein and many others without them we would not have the understanding of our world what it is today.

But also novels feature in the list, i.a. one of my most favourite authors, Jane Austen, who could omit her?

In any case, a most interesting list of books that are worth looking at. The author himself mentions that whenever you make a list of any books, there will be people who disagree. I can only second that but it is interesting anyway.

From the back cover:

"Books That Changed the World tells the fascinating stories behind 50 books that, in ways great and small, have changed the course of human history. Andrew Taylor sets each text in its historical context and explores its wider influence and legacy. Whether he's discussing the incandescent effect of The Qu'ran, the enduring influence of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, of the way in which Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe galavanized the anti-slavery movement, Taylor has written a stirring and informative testament to human ingenuity and endeavour. Ranging from The Iliad to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the Kama Sutra to Lady Chatterley's Lover, this is the ultimate, thought-provoking read for book-lovers everywhere."

Introduction.

"The Iliad, Homer; The Histories, Herodotus; The Analects, Confucius; The Republic, Plato; The Bible; Odes, Horace; Geographia, Ptolemy; Kama Sutra, Mallanaga Vatsyayana; The Qur'an; Canon of Medicine, Avicenna; The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer; The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli; Atlas, Gerard Mercator; Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes; First Folio, William Shakespeare; The Motion of the Heart and Blood, William Harvey; Two Chief World Systems, Galileo Galilei; Principia mathematica, Isaac Newton; Dictionary, Samuel Johnson; The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith; Common Sense, Thomas Paine; Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen; A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens; The Communist Manifesto (Das kommunistische Manifest), Karl Marx; Moby-Dick, Herman Melville; Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe; Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert; On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin; On Liberty, John Stuart Mill; War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy; The Telephone Directory; The Thousand and One Nights, Sir Richard Burton; A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle; The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud; The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; Poems, Wilfred Owen; Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, Albert Einstein; Ulysses, James Joyce; Lady Chatterley's Lover, D.H. Lawrence; The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes; If This is a Man, Primo Levi; Nineteen Eighty-four, George Orwell; The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir; The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger; Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe; Silent Spring, Rachel Carson; Quotations from Chairman Mao, Mao Zedong; Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling."

So far, I have only read 16 of these. I wouldn't agree that they have all changed my world but a lot of them certainly had an impact.

The Bible" - 2nd century BC-2nd century AD
Cervantes, Miguel de "Don Quixote" - 1605-15
Shakespeare - 1594-1616
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von "The Sorrows of Young Werther" - 1774
Austen, Jane "Pride and Prejudice" - 1813
Dickens, Charles "A Christmas Carol" - 1843
Marx, Karl "The Communist Manifesto" (Das kommunistische Manifest) - 1848

Melville, Hermann "Moby-Dick" - 1851
Beecher Stowe, Harriet "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" - 1852
Flaubert, Gustave "Madame Bovary" - 1857
Tolstoy, Leo "War and Peace" - 1869
Doyle, Arthur Conan "A Study in Scarlet" - 1887
Joyce, James "Ulysses" - 1922
Orwell, George "Nineteen Eighty-four" - 1949
Salinger, J.D. "The Catcher In The Rye" - 1951
Achebe, Chinua "Things Fall Apart" (The African Trilogy #1) - 1958
Rowling, J.K. "Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone" - 1997

Bonnett, Alastair "Off the Map"

Bonnett, Alastair "Off the Map" - 2014

Cartophilia is the love of maps. I certainly have that. It combines well with topophilia, the love of place. I think I suffer from both of them and this is a great book for those of us who are addicted to cards.

Alastair Bonnett, a professor of Social Geography from Newcastle, lists a lot of interesting, weird, forgotten, lost, invisible places in this book and describes them very accurately. There are places we don't want to visit (like Pripyat near Chernobyl), places we can't visit (like Mount Athos, well, at least not the female part of this world), places that don't exist anymore (or have been renamed), places that would be fun just to visit because of their weird identity (Baarle-Nassau in the Netherlands is an interesting example and definitely on our list) and lots of curious, weird, quirky places that it's just fun to read about.

So, if like me, you love geography and/or maps, this is the book for you. Get your atlas out and read it.

From the back cover:

"In a world of Google Earth, it is easy to believe that every discovery has been made and every adventure had, Off the Map is a stunning testament to how mysterious our planet still is. It takes us into unchartered territory, to places found on few maps and sometimes on none.

From forgotten enclaves to floating islands, from hidden villages to New York gutter spaces, Off the Map charts the hidden corners of our planet. And while these are not necessarily places you would choose to visit on holiday - Hobyo, the pirate capital of Somalia, or Zheleznogorsk, a secret military town in Russia - they each carry a story about the strangeness of place and our need for a geography that understands our hunger for the fantastic and the unexpected. But it also shows us that topophilia, the love of place, is a fundamental part of what it is to be human. Whether you are an urban explorer or an armchair traveller, Off the Map will inspire and enchant. You'll never look at a map in quite the same way again."

Pye, Michael "The Edge of the World"

Pye, Michael "The Edge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are" - 2014

An exciting book. A look at how we became what we are. What has the North Sea done, how has it contributed to our history?

It looks like it has done a lot, it sent out fishermen and pirates, businessmen and adventurers. We didn't just find the American Continent by those first people who wanted to find new waterways, a lot of our system and how we live today started there. Our way of living, doing business, organizing, politics, law, science, insurance, money, art, everything comes from those explorations and how people first started to settle and find their way in this world.

Frisians, Vikings, Angles, Irish, Dutch, they all added their bits. And being from the Northern part of Germany myself, I have often found a connection to all those other inhabitants of the North Sea shores, we don't just share that history, we share a lot of culture, we tell the same jokes, have the same folk music.

I especially loved the part of the Hanseatic League, a 13th to 17th century alliance of European trading cities reaching from the Baltic to the North Sea and inland. If you read "Buddenbrooks" by Thomas Mann, one of my favourite books, you should be familiar with the influence the Hanse had on the people at the time. But it is often seen as a predecessor of the European Union. While I don't think that is exactly true, it was the first union that found that you are stronger in a league, that your chances were bigger and your gain larger.

Hugely interesting, not just for Europeans. There are so many threads, so many details in this book. Granted, it doesn't give the answer to everything but it surely is a great way to start if you only want to try to understand part of where we are today.

From the back cover:
"When the Romans retreated from northern Europe, they left behind lands of barbarians at the very edge of the known world. Yet a thousand years later the countries surrounding the North Sea were at the heart of scientific, mercantile and artistic enlightenments and controlled the first truly global empires.
In The Edge of the World, Michael Pye explains how a small but treacherous body of water inspired the saints, spies, fisherman, pirates, traders and marauders who lived beside and journeyed across the North Sea to give birth to our modern world."

Some books mentioned:
The Gospel according to Heliand (Saviour)
Lorris, Guillaume de "Le Roman de la Rose"
Huges, Thomas "Tom Brown's Schooldays"

Woodhouse, C.M. "Modern Greece. A Short History"

Woodhouse, C.M. (Christopher Montague) "Modern Greece. A Short History" - 2000

Great overview over Greek history. But not just Greek history. If you are at all interested in the history of the world, this is an excellent account of Ancient and Modern Greece and how it developed into the country it is today.

The title might be a little misleading as it says both "modern" as well as "short". It starts in the year 324, so not exactly just a decade ago. And it stretches over almost 400 pages (although I wouldn't have minded if it had been twice as long). However, the book is interestingly written and we get to understand modern Greece a lot better through its history - as we do with almost anything. It contains a few maps that make us realize how much the world as changed in that part of the world throughout the centuries. Great analysis of a people that formed our modern day world.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"Acclaimed for its penetration, balance, and insight, Modern Greece tells the story of Greece and its people, from the founding of Constantinople to the eclipse of socialism in the late twentieth century. C. M. Woodhouse is uniquely qualified to write the history of Greece, having served there in the Allied military and the British embassy during and after World War II before writing several books on Greece. In this classic work, which Woodhouse has updated five times to create a truly comprehensive history, the depth of his knowledge and understanding of the country and its citizens comes through clearly in every chapter, as he ranges from the ascendancy and eventual fall of the Byzantine Empire through the emergence for the first time of a unified Greek kingdom in the 1800s to the political turmoil of twentieth-century politics. This is a book for readers and travelers who wish to understand the history and culture behind the beauty that is eternal Greece."

Garfield, Simon "On the Map"

Garfield, Simon "On the Map. Why the World Looks the Way it Does" (aka: "On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks") - 2012

I have always loved maps. They are beautiful, they tell tales of far away countries, exotic worlds, people I will never meet, life at different times. How can anybody not like maps. They teach us so much, yet they are also an art form to admire and enjoy.

Simon Garfield has put together a collection of stories about maps through the ages. He does not just tells us what the most interesting maps are, he tells us the whole history. What did the first known map look like, how did it change over time, why do we draw maps the way we do, what do they tell us?

Any map is a drawing of a location as well as a political statement. While most of the first maps were drawn for sea voyagers and a lot of the continents were only known as an outline, things have changed. There is a long way from the Mercator to the Google Map. Simon Garfield tells us about this trip. He introduces the oldest map and the biggest map, he shows us how maps could help stop diseases, how guidebooks changed the way of travel and how satellite navigation changes our way of looking at the world.

If someone didn't care for maps before they got this book in their hands, they certainly will afterwards. There are stories behind every map. For example, I really liked the one about Phyllis Pearsall who walked the streets of London in order to publish the London A-Z. And he even mentions an episode from one of my favourite television shows, "The West Wing", where Press Secretary C.J. Cregg and Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman attend a briefing by cartographers who want to change all maps in schools from the Mercator to the Peters Projection map and explain that Greenland is a lot smaller than Africa (fourteen times smaller, in fact), something you would never guess if you looked at the well-known Mercator map.

In one article, the author describes the way a lot of computer games are based on maps. This reminded me of one of our favourite first games called Bushbuck. It was a treasure hunt, you would be given an object that was well known for a certain town (usually the capital of a country) and you had to fly there. Along the way you would receive hints until you found the town. It was a wonderful game and we found exotic places like Tuvalu and Kiribati. A wonderful way to learn the countries and their capitals, unfortunately it does not seem to exist anymore.

If you didn't get the idea until now, I really loved this book.

One of my favourite quotes on page 63: "Most [maps] share a common purpose: they were not intended for use, at least not for travel use. Rather, they were statements of philosophical, political, religious, encyclopedic and conceptual concerns."

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"Maps fascinate us. They chart our understanding of the world and they log our progress, but above all they tell our stories. From the early sketches of philosophers and explorers through to Google Maps and beyond, Simon Garfield examines how maps both relate and realign our history.

With a historical sweep ranging from Ptolemy to Twitter, Garfield explores the legendary, impassable (and non-existent) mountains of Kong, the role of cartography in combatting cholera, the 17th-century Dutch craze for Atlases, the Norse discovery of America, how a Venetian monk mapped the world from his cell and the Muppets' knack of instant map-travel. Along the way are pocket maps of dragons, Mars, murders and more, with plenty of illustrations and prints to signpost the route.

From the bestselling and widely-adored author of Just My Type, On The Map is a witty and irrepressible examination of where we've been, how we got there and where we're going."

Winchester, Simon "The Map that Changed the World"

Winchester, Simon "The Map that Changed the World: A Tale of Rocks, Ruin and Redemption" - 2001

This was one of the most interesting scientific books I ever read. William Smith, an ordinary boy in the 18th century, discovers the history of our planet. He was the first to find that the earth is arranged in layers, he found fossils that were different from those in other areas, he detects that England has to have been under water once, he discovers the ice age. He made a geological map of England that looks very much like the one they still use today. Amazing. I loved to read the story of this ordinary guy who changed mapmaking forever, who discovered so much without ever having been educated that way. He laid the groundwork for so many other scientific discoveries that would change the world forever. This is a book everybody should read.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"The fascinating story of William Smith, the orphaned son of an English country blacksmith, who became obsessed with creating the world's first geological map and ultimately became the father of modern geology."

Ackroyd, Peter "Thames. Sacred River"

Ackroyd, Peter "Thames. Sacred River" - 2007

I love history and I love England. So, what's better than reading a book about a part of my favourite country that is so important to its history, geography, really anything that defines this wonderful country. It's amazing how much you can write about "a bit of water". This book is about the story of the great river, from its source to the sea, from its early beginnings and the first settlements until the importance it still has today for the United Kingdom. How it shaped not just the landscape but also the people. How people used it but also worshipped it.

A very interesting account of how history develops, how states are founded, how much a river contributes to the art of a country, to its politics, its success. Great writing, great book.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2024.

From the back cover:

"Just as Peter Ackroyd's bestselling London is the biography of the city, Thames: Sacred River is the biography of the river, from sea to source. Exploring its history from prehistoric times to the present day, the reader is drawn into an extraordinary world, learning about the fishes that swim in the river and the boats that ply its surface; about floods and tides; hauntings and suicides; miasmas and malaria; locks, weirs and embankments; bridges, docks and palaces.

Peter Ackroyd has a genius for digging out the most surprising and entertaining details, and for writing about them in the most magisterial prose; the result is a wonderfully readable and captivating guide to this extraordinary river and the towns and villages which line it."