"I'm going to snuggle in bed and read the geekiest book ever written, " I proclaimed and went off to read Transit Maps of the World (2007) by Mark Ovenden. "That is a geeky book," my wife confirmed. But it's a book so wonderfully geeky that it goes all the way around to being cool again.

As the title implies this is a book of maps from transit systems around the world, not being too picky about a strict definition for urban transit thankfully. The book approaches maps of metro systems from an historic and design perspective. The book is divided into six zones with the older and larger systems getting more attention in the early zones, with less detail on the smaller and newer systems (although amazingly some of the systems in Asia that are of recent vintage are growing in leaps and bounds).

Ovenden appreciates the simplicity of a diagramatic map that eschews topography, where the lines branch out at 45 degree angles, the stations are marked with simple white circles and bulls-eyes for transfer stops, and the stations are clearly labeled in a unique font where the words do not cross the lines. The book illustrates that most metro maps in the world are variations on these simple design themes that originated with Harry Beck's famous map of the London Underground. The major exception is the New York MTA map which is geographically based, and I think appropriately so due to NYC's unique topography, although here I disagree with the author (I also found an interesting topographically-correct map of Boston's MBTA system at a website called Radical Cartogaphry).

What I like about this book most is the author's delight in the maps and the maps and the transit systems they represent. There's really a lot of positive commentary in this book and joy in public transit. Even the MBTA, much-maligned by Bostonians, comes off sounding pretty good. He even includes this classic, hand-drawn map of the old Boston MTA system where the elevated tracks are rendered in 3-D.

Here are a list of transit-related websites suggested by the book, plus one that makes up maps for Boston's future that I've been a fan of for some time. I think my fellow transit geeks can waste away many an hour here.

• UrbanRail.Net


• MTA Transit Museum


• London Transport Musuem


• UITP


• The Subway Page


• NYC Subway.org


• Subway Maps


• Subways.net


• The Future MBTA

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Archetypal coffeetable book: Pretty, superficially interesting, glossy pictures, a smidgen of intanational style, and ultimately of much more interest to obsessive freaks than the populace at large. ( )

Some people get sucked in to reality television. Me, I see a map and will zone out on it for hours. I love maps!

Mark Ovenden assembled a book that contains maps of every urban train system in the world. Subway geeks will love it. And plain old map geeks like me as well. Older systems with more history get more pages and a series of maps that show the changing styles of the maps as well as the expansion of the systems. Newer ones get fewer pages. The newest, including ones that are only in the planning stages, get thumbnails. But it’s pretty complete.

(Full review at my blog) ( )

Interesting, but not very useful. ( )