Vargic's Miscellany of Curious Maps: The Atlas of Everything You Never Knew You Needed to Know

Husband says it’s a great book

I bought this together with GREAT MAPS also available through Amazon and what an exceptional combination for anyone interested in both the development of cartography and how it has inspired our imaginations. This is book is suitable for those interested in the colour and originality of map design and display whilst Great Maps provides more technical and historical detail. Both will inspire young and old alike to love not only maps but the way that a map describes our fantasies, our desire to travel, the wonders of our history, culture and the places we will find (and aspire to discover), the journey that is life and ultimately our ambitions for all of those things. This and GREAT MAPS are two rare gems, beautifully made and wonderfully laid out.

The book is adorned with high quality graphics and thick pages, giving a quality feel to the book. Sadly this is where the positive feedback ends. The content is poor, with many spelling mistakes, and excessive use of statistics on sex and maps showing porn hotspots of the world, which may be expected when you realise the author is a 17 year old male. Also, although his 'research' comes from Google, there is very little acknowledgement of the source, I don't believe some things written and have no idea of the source. There are no pull out pages, as described in the description, and to read the details on the maps, the font size is so small I needed a very powerful magnifying glass. I returned this book, as it was not as described and very poor content. If you do decide to buy it you will flick through it once and I doubt you will ever pick it up again.

Great book. Looks amazing. I didn't truly know what it was about and bought it for my child and he loves maps. This is not for children in my opinion. Some parents might not care about the swear words and maps or which city has the most sexual population. But all this doesn't take away from the book itself if that's what your into. Very well designed book.

The maps in this book truly are curious; they're also intricately drawn and informative.If you've ever wondered where in the world you are most likely to be struck by lightning, how many tractors there are per 1,000 inhabitants in any given country or the location of the highest concentration of heavy metal bands (in my case this is useful so I can avoid going there!) then this book is for you.I bought this book as a present for my teenage niece, who loved it, but I couldn't resist having a sneeky read before I wrapped it.

Some of these maps are interesting and they have been printed well, but most seem like things that have been done elsewhere in more interesting ways around the internet. Plenty of them take a single idea and don't do enough with it, making the book rather disappointing. The actual quality of the printing etc is superb and I'm sure younger readers will find it fascinating.

Item arrived days earlier than expected. The book is so well illustrated and incredibly funny. Really well thought out and constructed. Would highly recommend.

Nice alternative to the usual map books