A book I found on sale in a 2nd-hand bookshop in Munich a couple of years ago. I like maps so bought it after a quick flick-through; and read it in April on my balcony in the Coronasun. It’s a semi-academic work from 1949; this was a good time for intelligent academic works – scholarly books from between, say, 1945 and 1990 are usually quite disciplined, professional, but still human and approachable. Before World War 2 a lot of academic works tend to the eccentric, and while this is charming it can be offputting, if you’re used to a certain professionalism; round about the late 80s the noxious influence of (((French))) Marxists like Derrida effectively ruined academia, so that post-80s writing is increasingly, stridently ideological (regardless of the ostensible topic); and, just as bad for the sensitive reader, the modern academic writes a rebarbatively dull prose, a kind of literary Brutalism.

Brown’s book is, as the title suggests, a history of maps and mapmaking, beginning in antiquity and ending in the late 1930s; it takes in the political/military implications, and covers scientific/technological points like latitude, time-keeping, etc. The prose is straightforward and capable, e.g.:

One story tells of a loyal Carthaginian sea captain whose ship was pursued and intercepted by a Roman squadron. Rather than let his log and charts, keys to the secret of a lucrative Carthaginian trade, fall into Roman hands, he ran his ship on the rocks and drowned his crew. When he finally reached home he was given a hero’s welcome. This is by no means an isolated example.

This is typical of Brown: there is no thrusting-in of a modern political opinion, no Marxist finger-stabbing or jargon. It is writing from a better age.