The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime (2000)

A third rate New Yorker style essay that has been blown up with second rate psychobabble. ( )

Maps have been, at various times in history, as valuable as gold. History has often turned because of a stolen map. It is believed Christopher Columbus may have discovered America thanks to a stolen map. Not that America was on the map, but he probably would not have tried to reach Asia by sailing west without that map.

Miles Harvey says a lot about maps, and especially stolen maps, in his book "The Island of Lost Maps," but mostly he focuses on the cartographic crimes of Gilbert Bland. Bland made a good living by brazenly stealing valuable maps from libraries throughout North America and selling them to collectors and dealers.

But Bland is hardly the only person to steal maps from libraries in recent years. Libraries are not known for having tight security. Their reason for existence, after all, is to give the public access to information. And not every patron can be watched all the time. Bland would simply ask to see an old atlas and, when nobody else was around, use a razor blade to cut out one or more maps. He would return the atlas with the maps inside his shirt, and librarians would be none the wiser. After Bland was caught, not all the recovered stolen maps could be returned. Some libraries still didn't know anything was missing.

The Bland case and Harvey's book, published in 2000, have served to remind libraries that safeguarding valuable documents is another reason they exist. ( )

This book was recommended by Library Thing. The topic is interesting- the theft of antique maps cut out out of rare books. A double crime of defacing a rare book and stealing an artifact. Harvey traces the development of a thief, Gilbert Bland, his crimes, and the history of cartography. I was very upset to read about the cutting out of pages of maps using a razor blade. This is not just stealing, but vandalism as well. It's like taking a razor blade to the Mons Lisa or spray painting a Rembrandt (which I believe has happened). Maps have been forged and used for self-promotion since the age of discovery. And some people have an obsessive fascination for them and will go to any lengths to add to their collection. Harvey does his best to try to explain this fascination. Librarians are not portrayed in a positive light with a few exceptions. Apparently, many affected by these crimes prefer to ignore or deny them. Harvey shows the conflict that librarians of rare books face in the era of poor funding and inadequate security : protect the book and at the same time make it available to the public. After reading this book I have come to the position that these books should only be available under strict supervision (I'm thinking a model like the TSA or El Al) to legitimate, credentialed scholars and historians. Digitized copies could be made available to the rest of us. While the material was interesting, it was not compelling. I found myself skimming through several chapters. ( )

Harvey does a nice job weaving in the history of map making and libraries into this true crime tale. I enjoyed the first half of the book far better than the second half.

I read this book in one setting. It was thrilling and descriptive and very, very disturbing. The libraries that were the scenes of crimes committed by people who trade in commodified maps were described so beautifully that I wanted nothing more than to travel to them and sit at their tables and read a book and not cut something out.

It is naive to believe that where there is interest a market will not spring to life. However, I found myself absolutely enraged at the clinical nature of the dealings in what I believe are living works of science and art seamlessly blended to communicate information.

Maps are romantic and inspiring and frustrating. The black market in them is no less intriguing and depressing. To deface a book in a library is nothing to one who can see only the monetary value in a page. And there is a market for such people and such pages.

This is a well-written, enjoyably read tale of map-sellers and investigative journalism that has very little to do with the science of cartography, although I believe it to be enormously relevant to anyone interested in that science.

It raises ethical and moral questions. It raises questions about the purpose of maps and how they exist in our day-to-day lives and world. The author also, and more immediately, evokes a sense of the sacred in library spaces. I am still inspired to tour the libraries he describes, if only to gaze in their windows and think off all the pages left alone by thieving blades. ( )