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Loading... The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern…by Simon Winchester
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  eilonwy_anne | Sep 21, 2009 |  A bit heavy going at times, since I'm not very science-y but a nice, informing book about how geology really started taking off as a discipline. (  ) janeycanuck | Aug 3, 2009 | Normally, I find biographical/historical works fascinating. Looking at the cover and reading the jacket summary, I was expecting another Longitude or Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Unfortunately, that's not what we have here. Mr. Winchester's presentation of the material completely destroyed any interest I may have had in William Smith's contribution to the founding of geological science. I can understand that, other than his ground-breaking cartography and his conflict with those who tried to steal credit for his work, there isn't a lot of exciting material present. However, rather than take Sobel's (Longitude) approach of simply writing a shorter book, Winchester found it necessary to stuff the book chock full of endless repetition, smarmy adulation, overly-long quotation and irrelevant travelogue. Coupled with his need to employ footnotes incessantly, this caused me to lose the thread of the main story quite often. Shortly after halfway through the book, I found myself skimming more and more frequently, trying to pick out the portions that were germane to the story in which I was interested. A disappointment. (  )1  TadAD | Aug 17, 2008 | Man, did he ever want to drive home the point that William Smith is overlooked and that everyone owes him a debt of gratitude. Not nearly as good as "The Professor and the Mad Man." Good thing it was about maps, or this would have gotten fewer stars. (  ) VenusofUrbino | Aug 14, 2008 | This biography and geological history is one of Winchester's best books. It's concise, interesting, and holds together nicely. ( ) wanack | Jun 28, 2008 | 
 True, the reader must put aside a familiarity with Smith's discoveries, which have long since become textbook information, and travel back in time to the days when the earth was literally terra incognita. But for those willing to suspend previous knowledge and great expectations, Mr. Winchester tries hard to make this story worth the trip.
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Born to humble parents, Smith was also a child of the Industrial Revolution (the year of his birth, 1769, also saw Josiah Wedgwood open his great factory, Etruria, Richard Arkwright create his first water-powered cotton-spinning frame, and James Watt receive the patent for the first condensing steam engine). While working as surveyor in a coal mine, Smith noticed the abrupt changes in the layers of rock as he was lowered into the depths. He came to understand that the different layers--in part as revealed by the fossils they contained--always appeared in the same order, no matter where they were found. He also realized that geology required a three-dimensional approach. Smith spent the next 20 some years traveling throughout Britain, observing the land, gathering data, and chattering away about his theories to those he met along the way, thus acquiring the nickname "Strata Smith." In 1815 he published his masterpiece: an 8.5- by 6-foot, hand-tinted map revealing "A Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales."
Despite this triumph, Smith's road remained more rocky than smooth. Snubbed by the gentlemanly Geological Society, Smith complained that "the theory of geology is in the possession of one class of men, the practice in another." Indeed, some members of the society went further than mere ostracism--they stole Smith's work. These cartographic plagiarists produced their own map, remarkably similar to Smith's, in 1819. Meanwhile the chronically cash-strapped Smith had been forced to sell his prized fossil collection and was eventually consigned to debtor's prison.
In the end, the villains are foiled, our hero restored, and science triumphs. Winchester clearly relishes his happy ending, and his honey-tinged prose ("that most attractively lovable losterlike Paleozoic arthropod known as the trilobite") injects a lot of life into what seems, on the surface, a rather dry tale. Like Smith, however, Winchester delves into the strata beneath the surface and reveals a remarkable world. --Sunny Delaney
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:17 -0400)
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This is, after all, a fairly straightforward story. Though William Smith's accomplishments shaped the history of geology, his life and career are fashioned on the scale of the personal, the regional. Where Winchester has excelled, in A Crack in the Edge of the World and Krakatoa, in tracking down scores of accounts and sources and using them to fashion a multi-faceted portrait of vast cataclysm, here he has a smaller canvas to paint. He has fewer sources -- Smith's papers and abortive autobiography, his nephew's biography of him -- as well. There is less here for Winchester to thoroughly investigate and vividly imagine for us, and less surprise. Smith's ill fortune and lack of recognition is hardly startling, since it fits into a pattern in the history of the sciences in Britain, as Winchester notes.
I'm glad Winchester wrote this book. It's unfair that Smith's posterity should be confined to those who took Sedimentology and Stratigraphy courses in college, and I was glad to learn more about him than the single day's lecture I remember from that class. It was edifying, well-written and interesting. However, I feel it could have been pruned quite a bit.
Notes on the audiobook: The author narrated his own book, and did it admirably. His accents for quotes -- notably Smith's own Oxfordshire -- were lovely. (