The map that changed the world

History

First published: 2001
Print length: 439 pagesWheeler Pub., 2001

Description

Simon Winchester follows English geologist William Smith as he attempts to show that the rocks beneath Britain form an intelligible history. Traveling through the country and observing mines, canals, quarries, strata, and fossils, Smith recognizes that local layers belong to a wider sequence and can be identified by the remains embedded within them. That insight leads toward his pioneering geological map of England, Wales, and southern Scotland. Winchester connects the project to coal extraction, canal building, land use, the founding of the Geological Society of London, and changing beliefs about Earth’s age and the origins of life. Smith’s lack of wealth and social standing, culminating in debtor’s prison, gives the scientific story a human conflict between practical discovery, institutional authority, and recognition.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Descriptive · Direct · Journalistic

Pace

Moderate

Tone

Cerebral · Earnest · Reflective

Structure

Chronological nonfiction

Focus

Character · Ideas · Information

Emotional intensity

3 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 2 / 5

Themes

ClassKnowledge and truthLegacyNature and environmentPowerWork

About Simon Winchester

Simon Winchester is a British-American journalist and popular historian whose nonfiction moves between biography, science, travel, and the history of ambitious intellectual projects. His experience reporting events including Bloody Sunday and Watergate informs a narrative method that usually begins with people caught in consequential circumstances, then expands to explain the institutions, technologies, or natural forces around them. In The Professor and the Madman, the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary emerges through the unusual collaboration between editor James Murray and the confined contributor W. C. Minor. The Map That Changed the World similarly follows William Smith’s geological discoveries through mines, canals, fossils, professional rivalry, and debtor’s prison. Winchester can also organize a book around catastrophe. Krakatoa proceeds from the mechanics of a volcanic eruption to its tsunamis, colonial setting, human toll, and rapid transmission as global news. His prose is direct and descriptive, with technical explanation broken into episodes and anchored by physical details, individual decisions, and the practical labor behind knowledge.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Wheeler Pub.
Language: English
ISBN: 9781587241536

Keep your books and notes in Collected for iPhone.

Apple Books is a service mark of Apple Inc. iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.