Here are 100 books that Mr. Beck's Underground Map fans have personally recommended if you like
Mr. Beck's Underground Map.
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Mark Ovenden is a broadcaster, lecturer and author who specialises in the design of public transport. His books include âTransit Maps of The Worldâ - an Amazon Top 100 best-seller - and a dozen others covering cartography, architecture, typography, way finding and history of urban transit systems, airline routes and railway maps. He has spoken on these subjects across the World and is a regular on the UK's Arts Society lecture circuit. His television and radio programmes for the BBC have helped to explain the joys of good design and urban architecture. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and after many years living in cities like London, Paris, New York and ManchesterâŚnow enjoys a more rural life on the Isle of Wight.
Here is an example of a work that leaves no stone unturned, and does the job properly. There is an excellent introduction on the historical signage of the Subway, a proper explanation of why a new wayfinding system was necessary, the most comprehensive history on why Unimark was chosen to improve the signage and all the images you need of how their 1970 'Graphics Standards Manual' was implemented. Shaw rightly explains the move from the Standard Medium typeface to Helvetica and why it superseded Standard Medium and the fate of the original Unimark system.
How New York City subways signage evolved from a âvisual messâ to a uniform system with Helvetica triumphant.
For years, the signs in the New York City subway system were a bewildering hodge-podge of lettering styles, sizes, shapes, materials, colors, and messages. The original mosaics (dating from as early as 1904), displaying a variety of serif and sans serif letters and decorative elements, were supplemented by signs in terracotta and cut stone. Over the years, enamel signs identifying stations and warning riders not to spit, smoke, or cross the tracks were added to the mix. Efforts to untangle this visualâŚ
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to runâŚ
Mark Ovenden is a broadcaster, lecturer and author who specialises in the design of public transport. His books include âTransit Maps of The Worldâ - an Amazon Top 100 best-seller - and a dozen others covering cartography, architecture, typography, way finding and history of urban transit systems, airline routes and railway maps. He has spoken on these subjects across the World and is a regular on the UK's Arts Society lecture circuit. His television and radio programmes for the BBC have helped to explain the joys of good design and urban architecture. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and after many years living in cities like London, Paris, New York and ManchesterâŚnow enjoys a more rural life on the Isle of Wight.
The most detailed of all English books on the history of the Paris Metro and arguably the most informative on engineering, construction, signalling and rolling stock. With a level of detail bordering on the obsessive, Lamming probes the very heart of what makes this most impressive of World metro systems tick. The difficulties of building the first lines through the honeycombed quarries below Paris, and the first tunnels under the Seine are articulated in immense detail. With hundreds of engineers illustrations and archive photos there is little to compare this book with in the English language.
Mark Ovenden is a broadcaster, lecturer and author who specialises in the design of public transport. His books include âTransit Maps of The Worldâ - an Amazon Top 100 best-seller - and a dozen others covering cartography, architecture, typography, way finding and history of urban transit systems, airline routes and railway maps. He has spoken on these subjects across the World and is a regular on the UK's Arts Society lecture circuit. His television and radio programmes for the BBC have helped to explain the joys of good design and urban architecture. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and after many years living in cities like London, Paris, New York and ManchesterâŚnow enjoys a more rural life on the Isle of Wight.
With a razor sharp eye Wolmar (author of many other excellent books on railway history) concentrates his focus on the machinations of the establishment of the world's first railway built under the ground. Overcoming the travails of unbuilt fantasy concepts, the Victorians fear of the dark, finances and the problems of running steam trains in tunnels, London's City Solicitor Charles Pearson, managed to get the first route, the Metropolitan Railway, built and opened by January 1863. Wolmar unpicks the struggles to expand the line, private capitals, a rush to build more lines and the eventual nationalisation of the system in 1948.
Revised and updated edition of Christian Wolmar's classic history of the London Underground, with a new chapter on Crossrail.
'I can think of few better ways to while away those elastic periods awaiting the arrival of the next eastbound Circle Line train than by reading [this book].' Tom Fort, Sunday Telegraph
Since the Victorian era, London's Underground has played a vital role in the daily life of generations of Londoners. In The Subterranean Railway, Christian Wolmar celebrates the vision and determination of the nineteenth-century pioneers who made the world's first, and still the largest, underground passenger railway: one of theâŚ
The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More
by
Meredith Marple,
The coastal tourist town of Great Wharf, Maine, boasts a crime rate so low you might suspect someoneâs lying.
Nevertheless, jobless empty nester Mallory Cooper has become increasingly reclusive and fearful. Careful to keep the red wine handy and loath to leave the house, Mallory misses her happier selfâand soâŚ
Mark Ovenden is a broadcaster, lecturer and author who specialises in the design of public transport. His books include âTransit Maps of The Worldâ - an Amazon Top 100 best-seller - and a dozen others covering cartography, architecture, typography, way finding and history of urban transit systems, airline routes and railway maps. He has spoken on these subjects across the World and is a regular on the UK's Arts Society lecture circuit. His television and radio programmes for the BBC have helped to explain the joys of good design and urban architecture. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and after many years living in cities like London, Paris, New York and ManchesterâŚnow enjoys a more rural life on the Isle of Wight.
Donât worry if you are not fluent in German: this book is packed with images and if you want to understand the way the Berlin U-Bahn system expanded - it is required reading. Gottwaldt was the first person to collect and publish historic maps of the system and reproduction of the maps is exceptional. Starting in 1888 - before the present U-Bahn was conceived - his selection of cartographic delights includes the cityâs earliest urban rail lines. The 1896 plan of the âNord-Ringâ and âSud-Ringâ foretells how the pattern of Berlins current S-Bahn and his example of a 1922 track map exhibits just how extensive railway land was in Europes biggest cities. My favourites are the 1934 and 1936 diagrams which echo the work of Beck in London. If mass transit interests you: find this book!
I am a historian fascinated with maps and geography, I have produced historical atlases on the world, Britain, war, cities, naval history, fortifications, and World War Two, as well as books on geopolitics and maps. I am an Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Exeter and a Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute and of Policy Exchange.
Wide-ranging, high-production values, a good balance of maps and text, and excellent value for money. Includes many different types of map not least those of fantasy worlds.
The British Library's map collection is the national cartographic collection of Britain and numbers around four million maps dating from 15 CE to 2017 CE. These include road maps drawn for 13th century pilgrims and sea charts for 17th-century pirates. They include the first printed map to show the Americas and the last to show English-controlled Calais. They include the world's biggest and smallest atlases. They include maps for kings and queens, popes, ministers, schoolchildren, soldiers, tourists. There are maps which changed the world. As well as comprehensively showcasing the varied and surprising treasures of the British Library's "banquet ofâŚ
I have liked maps since childhood and remember them prompting all sorts of questions, like why was that city, mountain, or border there instead of someplace else, or I would imagine what it would be like to visit those places. I donât feel like I can truly understand or make sense of a place until I can see it from above, so I spend too much time on Google Earth. I have especially valued how maps or other cartographic representations can help illuminate the connections and interdependencies between peoples and places, between society and nature, and ultimately help us understand our place in the world.
After flipping through a few pages, I was immediately engrossed by this bookâs exquisite and thought-provoking illustrations. Mason and Miller showcase many cartographic techniques beyond what we commonly consider a map, ranging in scale from the globe to mountain ranges and river basins to cities and neighborhoods to factory floors.Â
I was struck by the blend of creativity and artistry that went into creating these maps and how well this book showcased the wide range of possibilities for representing almost anything visually and cartographically. Including approximately 300 illustrations, the book has the feel of a coffee-table book and can be easily broken down and read in short chunks, although I found it hard to put down.
Created for map lovers by map lovers, this book explores the intriguing stories behind maps across history and illuminates how the ancient art of cartography still thrives today.
In this visually stunning book, award-winning journalists Betsy Mason and Greg Miller--authors of the National Geographic cartography blog "All Over the Map"--explore the intriguing stories behind maps from a wide variety of cultures, civilizations, and time periods. Based on interviews with scores of leading cartographers, curators, historians, and scholars, this is a remarkable selection of fascinating and unusual maps--some never before published. This diverse compendium includes ancient maps of dragon-filled seas, elaborateâŚ
Donât mess with the hotheadâor he might just mess with you. Slater IbĂĄĂąez is only interested in two kinds of guys: the ones he wants to punch, and the ones he sleeps with. Things get interesting when they start to overlap. A freelance investigator, Slater trolls the dark side ofâŚ
I have obsessed with maps my whole life, but I guess the main drive for studying them is my enjoyment of outdoor spaces, as a hiker, a mountaineer, and as a sailor: always with a paper map at hand. If you use GPS (a wonderful innovation) you will not only lose some of your precious orientation abilities but above all you will look less at the environment around you. I feel that paper maps do a great favor to my brain and to my enjoyment of places. The books below are a great tribute to maps; they helped me understand them better, and this affected the way I use them.
If you draw a map, you have many choices of symbols, colors, types of lines, sizes of characters, and so on. We may think these are just arbitrary choices perpetuated by tradition, but MacEachren successfully shows that we better conceive of those items as solutions to communication problems in a subtle dialogue with the Gestalt requirements of visual perception. Not any symbol will do. The symbols must be fit for minds like ours.
I learned a lot from this visual approach to maps.
Now available in paperback for the first time, this classic work presents a cognitive-semiotic framework for understanding how maps work as powerful, abstract, and synthetic spatial representations. Explored are the ways in which the many representational choices inherent in mapping interact with information processing and knowledge construction, and how the resulting insights can be used to make informed symbolization and design decisions. A new preface to the paperback edition situates the book within the context of contemporary technologies. As the nature of maps continues to evolve, Alan MacEachren emphasizes the ongoing need to think systematically about the ways people interactâŚ
I have obsessed with maps my whole life, but I guess the main drive for studying them is my enjoyment of outdoor spaces, as a hiker, a mountaineer, and as a sailor: always with a paper map at hand. If you use GPS (a wonderful innovation) you will not only lose some of your precious orientation abilities but above all you will look less at the environment around you. I feel that paper maps do a great favor to my brain and to my enjoyment of places. The books below are a great tribute to maps; they helped me understand them better, and this affected the way I use them.
This is a super-authoritative book on the historical evolution of map-making by a renowned scholar of classics. It shows a surprising variety of maps from Antiquity to the present. Yet in this variety, Jacob is able to find important commonalities that help us understand what makes a map a map.
The take-home message for me has been that maps are engines of thought. By making a territory visible, they unleash a trove of otherwise unthinkable thoughts about it.Â
A novel work in the history of cartography, "The Sovereign Map" argues that maps are as much about thinking as seeing, as much about the art of persuasion as the science of geography. As a classicist, Christian Jacob brings a fresh eye to his subject - which includes maps from Greek Antiquity to the twentieth century - and provides a theoretical approach to investigating the power of maps to inform, persuade, and inspire the imagination. Beginning with a historical overview of maps and their creation - from those traced in the dirt by primitive hands to the monumental Dutch atlasesâŚ
Iâve been surrounded by maps all my life. As a child, a highlight of family summer holidays was the night before, pouring over road maps, planning every step of our drive from my home in rural English midlands, via the cross-channel ferry, to a rented gĂŽte in France, perhaps in the Dordogne or the Loire Valley. Maps are to me a paragon of design: a true marriage of science and art. In an amazingly compressed space, a well-designed map can be incredibly beautiful at the same time as containing an incredible amount of raw data, more than could be contained in reams of tables or many pages of text.
Maps are powerful, useful, functional objects. But mapmaking is also an art, with a long history and tradition of design. That indelible connection between the map room and the art gallery is what I enjoy most in this book.
Each map in this selection from the Bodleian Library at Oxford University is accompanied by a thoughtful reflection on the story behind the map and its impact. But it is the maps themselves, reproduced in rich color on high-density, fine-art-book quality paper, that are the main attractions here. I can, and have, spent many hours lost in an exploration of the flourishes, nooks, and curiosities of an individual map.
Immersing myself in an artful map from this book is to be transported to another time and place that is simultaneously endlessly strange and yet comfortingly familiar. Â
This book explores the stories behind seventy-five extraordinary maps. It includes unique treasures such as the fourteenth-century Gough Map of Great Britain, exquisite portolan charts made in the fifteenth century, the Selden Map of China - the earliest example of Chinese merchant cartography - and an early world map from the medieval Islamic Book of Curiosities, together with more recent examples of fictional places drawn in the twentieth century, such as C.S. Lewis's own map of Narnia and J.R.R. Tolkien's map of Middle Earth.
As well as the works of famous mapmakers Mercator, Ortelius, Blaeu, Saxton and Speed, the bookâŚ
I have liked maps since childhood and remember them prompting all sorts of questions, like why was that city, mountain, or border there instead of someplace else, or I would imagine what it would be like to visit those places. I donât feel like I can truly understand or make sense of a place until I can see it from above, so I spend too much time on Google Earth. I have especially valued how maps or other cartographic representations can help illuminate the connections and interdependencies between peoples and places, between society and nature, and ultimately help us understand our place in the world.
I was struck by this bookâs unusual topic and perspective, namely focusing on maps in fantasy, childrenâs and science fiction literature, movies, and television. I really appreciated that the book is a collection of essays in which writers and cartographers reflect on the maps of imaginary places that featured in their works and the maps, real or imagined, that inspired their creations.
That really gives the essays a personal feeling, and you get to know a little about the creation of maps like the Marauderâs Map from the Harry Potter franchise or the various maps of Middle Earth featured in The Hobbit series. I like that the essays are conversational, and with over 200 illustrations, I was anxious to turn to the next page.
Itâs one of the first things we discover as children, reading and drawing: Maps have a unique power to transport us to distant lands on wondrous travels. Put a map at the start of a book, and we know an adventure is going to follow. Displaying this truth with beautiful full-color illustrations, The Writerâs Map is an atlas of the journeys that our most creative storytellers have made throughout their lives. This magnificent collection encompasses not only the maps that appear in their books but also the many maps that have inspired them, the sketches that they used while writing,âŚ
