![]() ![]() ![]() "It's a library straight out of Jorge Luis Borges. ![]() "The librarian there told me that it had to be in the basement because the holdings were so heavy that if you tried to put the maps and atlases on the top floor, they would fall through to the basement anyway," he says. One of the places Jennings visited was the Library of Congress map division, which holds more than 4.5 million items. Jennings, who rose to national prominence in 2004 with his 74-game winning steak on Jeopardy!, charts what he calls "the wide, weird world of geography" in his latest book, Maphead, which profiles Google Maps engineers, geocachers, imaginary mapmakers, rare map collectors, National Geographic Bee contestants, roadtrippers and other "mapheads" who love latitude, longitude and everything in between. "There's just something hypnotic about maps." "If there's a map on the wall of the room, people like us just cannot turn away," he tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies. Then you might be a maphead, says trivia buff Ken Jennings. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Maphead Subtitle Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks Author Ken Jennings ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |