Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds, fascinating reference book for the masses

Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds, 100 New Ways to See the World by Ian Wright is an unexpected time suck in the best of all possible ways.  For example, I’ve never actively thought about those countries or territories that have smaller populations than greater Tokyo. I have also never thought about how the ratio of heavy metal bands per 100 thousand people. Regarding the later query, those in Scandinavia-especially Finland, love some metal, whereas a metal group in central Africa would have a tough time finding an audience. Some of the maps in Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds are serious, some are trivial, but for curious people 10 and up they’ll all be fascinating.

This is a thought-provoking book that is lots of fun to look at. For some people this is a perfect book to have in your bathroom. Others will have it on their coffee table for visitors to thumb through. It’s also at-home in any geography classroom for grades 6 and up. It’s a reference book for those things that you didn’t know you needed to reference.

Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds is broken up into nine different chapters. People and Populations, Politics, Power and Religion, Culture and Customs, Friends and Enemies, Geography, History, National Identity, Crime and Punishment, plus Nature are how the maps are classed. Even within each chapter readers will find a variety of maps that will appeal to policy wonks and pop culture fans.

Most of the maps are global so as to point out the vast differences of whatever topic it’s pointing out. Which countries spend the most on their military? What were the global travel times from London in 1914 (and another map for 2016) if you were to travel anywhere in the world? Who has state back religions? What are the 20 largest islands?

Some other factoids are more regional and concentrate only on Africa, Europe, the United States or the way that populations are concentrated in Australia and Canada. Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds is a sticky tape book that doesn’t let go of you once you look through the pages. High school audiences and those adults who love to learn or want to dazzle people at parties with in-depth information that nobody else in the room will know will love this book.

Ian Wright is the author of Brilliant Maps and runs the website BrilliantMaps.com. The book retails for $19.99 and is from The Experiment.

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