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Beyond the Map (from the author of Off the Map): Unruly enclaves, ghostly places, emerging lands and our search for new utopias
Geography is getting stranger. Out there fleets of new islands are under construction and eye-wateringly insane micro-nations are struggling into the light; unseen rivers are tumbling under sleeping cites and once secret fantasy-gardens are cracking open their doors. As groups like Islamic State fabricate proto-states whose boundaries ebb and flow with each passing day, it certainly feels as if all the old maps are being frantically scribbled over or torn up.
Alaistair Bonnet presents the stories of 43 of these extraordinary places, all of which will challenge the very concept of place. The ever more unruly maps of human and physical geography can seem overwhelming. Perhaps that’s why little places, the small secrets, the hidden surprises, have become so important. Alastair will set out on a journey across the world in search of a diverse range of modern utopias, from the Dubai Shopping Mall to the Findhorn eco-community in Scotland and Cybertopias such as Second Life.
Beyond the Map takes you to the world’s unruly places, the zones unmarked on any official map that are multiplying and changing fast and asks us to reexamine what the borders of state, place, home mean in today's world.
Alaistair Bonnet presents the stories of 43 of these extraordinary places, all of which will challenge the very concept of place. The ever more unruly maps of human and physical geography can seem overwhelming. Perhaps that’s why little places, the small secrets, the hidden surprises, have become so important. Alastair will set out on a journey across the world in search of a diverse range of modern utopias, from the Dubai Shopping Mall to the Findhorn eco-community in Scotland and Cybertopias such as Second Life.
Beyond the Map takes you to the world’s unruly places, the zones unmarked on any official map that are multiplying and changing fast and asks us to reexamine what the borders of state, place, home mean in today's world.
304 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 6, 2017
44 people are currently reading
1153 people want to read
About the author
Alastair Bonnett
32 books79 followersAlastair Bonnett is a professor of social geography at Newcastle University. He is the author of several books, including What Is Geography?, How to Argue, Left in the Past, and The Idea of the West. He has also contributed to history and current affairs magazines on a wide variety of topics.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
May 8, 2018
This was a very good book, very interesting and entertaining at the same time. Beyond the Map takes us on a journey to places that we might not want to know personally (like the poorest slum in Colombo, or the islands of garbage in the pacific), but that we really need to know they exist, even if (or especially if) the maps do not shown them to us.
More than knowing that they exist, we need to reflect on why they exist and what does that say about us as a society. The idea that the public space in the cities belongs to everyone and, as a consequence, does not belong to anyone in particular hence no one really takes ownership, responsibility or feels very comfortable in it, was an idea that I already had in my mind but had never seen so clearly explained.
It also contains some anecdotal chapters, like the smallest country in the world that occupies a building, exists for centuries and has the right to be an UN observer (you have to read the book to find out what I'm talking about) that enrich the book and make it easier to read.
Recommended to everyone who likes non-fiction books and likes to think about our world apart beyond the obvious layers, see below the surface.
More than knowing that they exist, we need to reflect on why they exist and what does that say about us as a society. The idea that the public space in the cities belongs to everyone and, as a consequence, does not belong to anyone in particular hence no one really takes ownership, responsibility or feels very comfortable in it, was an idea that I already had in my mind but had never seen so clearly explained.
It also contains some anecdotal chapters, like the smallest country in the world that occupies a building, exists for centuries and has the right to be an UN observer (you have to read the book to find out what I'm talking about) that enrich the book and make it easier to read.
Recommended to everyone who likes non-fiction books and likes to think about our world apart beyond the obvious layers, see below the surface.
July 3, 2023
Der Autor nimmt uns mit an die Bruchstellen der Geographie. Wir erkunden entlegene Archipele, besuchen den Versuch, ein Utopia zu errichten, oder eine Filmstadt, die nicht nur Kulisse war oder eine Müllstadt am Rande Kairos. Die Beispiele sind durchaus interessant, leider verweilt der Autor zu kurz. Die Kapitel sind nicht besonders lang, vielleicht misstraut der Autor der Aufmerksamkeitsspanne des Lesers, ich hätte allerdings gerne von einigen Orten noch deutlich mehr gelesen. Zudem fehlt mir ein wenig der rote Faden im gesamten Werk. Somit ein paar Abzüge, dennoch bei weitem nicht schlecht.
March 5, 2024
This collection of essays shows the breadth of contemporary geography, covering instances far afield from physical topography and map-making. One imagines the author peppering his lectures with such curiosities and being popular with the students in his Intro to Geography class.
As ever with collections, I very much enjoyed some pieces, trudged through some others, resulting in a three-star average rating.
As ever with collections, I very much enjoyed some pieces, trudged through some others, resulting in a three-star average rating.
May 3, 2018
My recent first ever destination birthday made me think of other destinations. Time to armchair travel then and this book was just waiting for me courtesy of Netgalley. In all fairness this isn’t merely a travelogue, the 39 destinations here aren’t strictly geographical, they are also geopolitical, imaginary, ghostly and way, way off the beaten track. Some of them aren’t even on the map. They are…well, beyond the map. In fact the sheer range of the author’s choices is awesome, particularly for such a relatively compact volume. It’s terrifically educational, ranging from cyberutopias to trap streets, I’m hoping to retain a good amount of this information, because it was all completely fascinating and quite often completely bizarre too. And presented so cleverly, with such erudition…it’s the perfect nonfiction, the one that both entertains and engages. Read it in one day, which should speak volumes to the quality and readability of this book. Nonfiction tends to be something of a slog, but this sped by. The only think to improve upon would be some visual aid besides the black and white sketches, some photos of these wild locations would have been great. Maybe they are included in the final version, I did read an ARC published by the University of Chicago, a fact announced on every single freaking page…and this was still worth it. Way to make geography fun. Armchair traveler’s delight, this one goes places the every changing world doesn’t readily display and can (and really shouldn’t) get overlooked. Immensely enjoyable trip. Thanks Netgalley.
May 28, 2022
Dopo Fuori dalle mappe, eccoci qui con l’attesa continuazione!
Oltre le mappe si rivela più specifico e selettivo rispetto al suo predecessore. Sebbene il tema sia leggermente diverso, ho sempre apprezzato il tono geopolitico con cui l’autore ha analizzato i luoghi riportati. È ciò che fornisce a questi atlanti una marcia in più.
Non solo s’imparano molteplici nozioni e curiosità su località conosciute quanto ignote, ma ampliano la visione del mondo che ci circonda. Inoltre, leggere delle esperienze in prima persona dell’autore si è rivelato divertente quanto illuminante.
Spero in altri saggi con questo format in futuro perché non c’è nulla di più soddisfacente di imparare divertendosi.
Tra isole evanescenti, oasi criminali, utopie, aree segrete e altro ancora, gireremo il mondo andando a esplorare panorami che raramente vediamo pubblicizzati dalle compagnie di viaggio. E forse è meglio così date le premesse…
Nonostante l’apprezzamento dell’opera in sé, mi sarebbe piaciuto leggere qualcosa di più integrativo e l’assenza delle immagini che hanno invece decorato il suo predecessore si fa sentire. Per quel poco, davano una marcia in più alla narrazione.
Consigliato a tutti della geopolitica e a chi vuole scoprire gli angoli nascosti del nostro mondo.
Oltre le mappe si rivela più specifico e selettivo rispetto al suo predecessore. Sebbene il tema sia leggermente diverso, ho sempre apprezzato il tono geopolitico con cui l’autore ha analizzato i luoghi riportati. È ciò che fornisce a questi atlanti una marcia in più.
Non solo s’imparano molteplici nozioni e curiosità su località conosciute quanto ignote, ma ampliano la visione del mondo che ci circonda. Inoltre, leggere delle esperienze in prima persona dell’autore si è rivelato divertente quanto illuminante.
Spero in altri saggi con questo format in futuro perché non c’è nulla di più soddisfacente di imparare divertendosi.
Tra isole evanescenti, oasi criminali, utopie, aree segrete e altro ancora, gireremo il mondo andando a esplorare panorami che raramente vediamo pubblicizzati dalle compagnie di viaggio. E forse è meglio così date le premesse…
Nonostante l’apprezzamento dell’opera in sé, mi sarebbe piaciuto leggere qualcosa di più integrativo e l’assenza delle immagini che hanno invece decorato il suo predecessore si fa sentire. Per quel poco, davano una marcia in più alla narrazione.
Consigliato a tutti della geopolitica e a chi vuole scoprire gli angoli nascosti del nostro mondo.
February 10, 2020
"Hay libros curiosos: por el fondo (qué explican), y por la forma (lo que nos explican, cómo nos lo explican y cómo debemos llegar a ello). Libros que no pueden leerse sin más, que necesitan un acompañamiento para que su lectura sea más provechosa: música, determinados espacios y momentos de lectura, mapas, etc.; y algo así pasa con Lugares sin mapa (Blackie Books), segundo libro del profesor de Geografía Social Alastair Bonnett.
Un recorrido por aquellos sitios de este ancho mundo que, de repente o buscándolos, aparecen sin más, y tienen una historia que contar, porque, como dice en el prólogo, «Todo lugar es un terreno con una historia propia, un sitio con un significado humano», significados éstos cuanto menos sorprendentes en muchos casos, como cuando habla de «la versión propia de la utopía» de los islamistas de Daesh, porque avisa : «La erosión de las fronteras y las lealtades geográficas tradicionales está desencadenando energías utópicas de muy diverso pelaje […]» en un mundo donde la geografía «es cada vez más rara».
Así que cojamos un mapa, mejor google maps, y adentrémonos en este mundo de mundos que nos descubre Alastair Bonnett. No nos defraudará." Xavi Ceresuela
Un recorrido por aquellos sitios de este ancho mundo que, de repente o buscándolos, aparecen sin más, y tienen una historia que contar, porque, como dice en el prólogo, «Todo lugar es un terreno con una historia propia, un sitio con un significado humano», significados éstos cuanto menos sorprendentes en muchos casos, como cuando habla de «la versión propia de la utopía» de los islamistas de Daesh, porque avisa : «La erosión de las fronteras y las lealtades geográficas tradicionales está desencadenando energías utópicas de muy diverso pelaje […]» en un mundo donde la geografía «es cada vez más rara».
Así que cojamos un mapa, mejor google maps, y adentrémonos en este mundo de mundos que nos descubre Alastair Bonnett. No nos defraudará." Xavi Ceresuela
April 12, 2020
Libro sin grandes pretensiones. He descubierto curiosidades geográficas muy interesantes, aunque otras me han causado total indiferencia.
Pese a que de forma superficial, el autor hace referencia a los vínculos que tiene la humanidad con los lugares y los paisajes que le rodean. Se hace mención, entre otros, a la importancia que otorgamos a los lugares donde hemos crecido, a la libertad que sentimos cuando viajamos a tierras lejanas, o a la necesidad que tenemos por establecernos en un lugar fijo y echar raíces.
Pese a que de forma superficial, el autor hace referencia a los vínculos que tiene la humanidad con los lugares y los paisajes que le rodean. Se hace mención, entre otros, a la importancia que otorgamos a los lugares donde hemos crecido, a la libertad que sentimos cuando viajamos a tierras lejanas, o a la necesidad que tenemos por establecernos en un lugar fijo y echar raíces.
July 28, 2022
This is an interesting little book about various places that are difficult or impossible to find on maps, sometimes because they don't actually exist. Although more academic than Atlas Obscura, it does tend toward the bizarre and unusual. The author attempts to visit as many of these places as possible, an activity that he obviously relishes. And I think that the point of the book is not to entice the reader to visit such places, but to change the perspective of the reader so that they will notice and value interesting spaces when they stumble upon them, whether or not they are on any map.
March 19, 2025
Der Autor hat viele spannende, seltsame Orte in diesem Buch beschrieben. Einiges hatte ich nie vorher gehört und die Orte auch noch nach recherchiert aus Interesse. Bei insgesamt 39 Orten ist es aber auch klar, dass einen nicht alle interessieren. Ich persönlich hatte auch das Empfinden, dass zu viel Newcastle upon Tyne vorkam, da der Autor dort auch wohnt. Das war dann nicht besonders vielseitig teilweise.
November 15, 2018
We access maps with our phones, computer etc. In ‘Beyond the Map,’ Alastair Bonnett argues that maps are inadequate to describe the world − ‘the old view of geography as a collation of known and clear borders and established, accepted facts is disintegrating. The world exhibited in the book is fragmented and fragmenting; it is surging with utopian and secessionist ambitions and it harbours legions of ghosts and endless secrets.’
Geography is getting stranger: new islands are rising up, familiar territories are splintering and secret realms are cracking open their doors. The world’s unruly zones are multiplying and changing fast. With thirty-nine stories from thirty-nine extraordinary places, Alastair Bonnett tells us about the shifting nature of place and place-making.
Hostile Architecture:
From ubiquitous protrusions on window ledges to bus-shelter seats that pivot forward, from water sprinklers and loud muzak to hard tubular rests, from metal park benches with solid dividers to forests of pointed cement bollards under bridges, urban spaces are aggressively rejecting soft, human bodies.
We see these measures all the time within our urban environments, whether in London or Tokyo, but we fail to process their true intent. When you’re designed against, you know it. Other people might not see it, but you will. The message is clear: you are not a member of the public, at least not of the public that is welcome here.” The same is true of all defensive architecture. The psychological effect is devastating.
There is a wider problem, too. These measures do not and cannot distinguish the “vagrant” posterior from others considered more deserving. When we make it impossible for the dispossessed to rest their weary bodies at a bus shelter, we also make it impossible for the elderly, for the infirm, for the pregnant woman who has had a dizzy spell. By making the city less accepting of the human frame, we make it less welcoming to all humans. By making our environment more hostile, we become more hostile within it.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2...
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddes...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeyLE...
The Saharan Sand Wall:
The Saharan Sand Wall is the longest active military barrier in the world — a sand berm 1,367 miles long that is visible on Google Earth. Guarded by 90,000 Moroccan troops and bolstered with 7 million land mines, it has acted since the late 1980s as Morocco’s defense against the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, an essentially exiled people of 600,000 who mostly inhabit refugee camps in Algeria and Mauritania.
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/fea...
The Ferghana Valley:
The Ferghana Valley is at the centre of Asia, nearly 1,250 miles from the nearest ocean; the middle of the middle. It lies in the very heart of ‘Central Asia’, a rather nebulous but very central-sounding label that also puts it at the crossroads of three former Soviet states: Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
It is a riven heartland. The Ferghana Valley contains eight fractious enclaves. There are two marooned outposts of Tajikistan and four bits of Uzbekistan in that part of the valley that is in Kyrgyzstan, as well as one Tajik and one Kyrgyz territory in the part that is Uzbek. Although they appear as solid lines on most maps, many of the borders hereabouts are actually far from certain and very much disputed. Over recent years the valley’s many national boundaries have been witness to a lot of what the outside world usually classes as ‘ethnic violence���.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stratfor...
Tsunami Stones and Nuclear Markers:
The coastline of Japan is dotted with stone tablets, bearing warnings like "High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants,” and “Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis.” The Japanese are used to the power of nature, but the shock of the 11 March 2011 disaster, which is often referred to by the month and year as 3/11, has been profound. One of the consequences has been a renewed interest in the stones and an anguished search for new ways to send a message to subsequent generations.
How can we warn future generations? What can we do to create a mark in the landscape, some permanent alteration, which will make them sit up and listen? This is not just a dilemma for countries that suffer from tidal waves. The most profound challenge is for those many countries looking for somewhere to put nuclear waste, which will remain deadly for a hundred thousand years or even longer. How do we tell people to keep clear, to stay away from radioactive disposal sites, across such deep reaches of time? Recently the nuclear industry has been coming up with possible answers to this question, in part by drawing on the story of the tsunami stones.
They have turned to artists to come up with ideas. To date, these include creating children’s songs about radioactive waste that get carried down generations, and building a creative ‘laboratory’ above the waste sites in which each generation can think up new ways to explain the problem of nuclear waste. Another idea is to breed ‘Ray Cats’, genetically engineered felines that will start glowing when they are near radiation.
The tsunami stones, old and new, do important work, but it is time to admit that we can’t warn the distant future; we can’t buy off our guilt with stones, spikes, songs, luminous cats or anything else. With that acknowledgement should come another: the choice is between saying ‘let the future sort it out because we can’t’, or ‘we shouldn’t be creating lethal hazards for unborn generations’. The former position is so obviously irresponsible that it seems to me we are stuck with the latter. Our efforts need to go into creating cleaner types of energy supply. The tsunami stones determinedly exhort us to learn and listen; and one of the things they are saying is that we need to take responsibility for our own actions, and not pass the buck to the future.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-...
‘Dau’ Movie Set:
It is nearly unbelievable story of a Russian filmmaker who in the mid-2000s recreated a model city of Soviet-era Moscow, complete with apartments, electricity, and plumbing. The director required his cast to live there 24 hours a day and never break character. Actors began spying on one another and some were arrested by a secret police force that put them in jail alongside criminals brought in as extras from nearby jails.
Spratly Islands:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/s...
Trap Streets:
In cartography, a trap street is a fictitious entry in the form of a misrepresented street on a map, often outside the area the map nominally covers, for the purpose of "trapping" potential copyright violators of the map who, if caught, would be unable to explain the inclusion of the "trap street" on their map as innocent. On maps that are not of streets, other "copyright trap" features (such as nonexistent towns, or mountains with the wrong elevations) may be inserted or altered for the same purpose.
The most famous example of the insertion of a false place name on a map is the tiny settlement called Algoe, the town that’s namechecked in the film Paper Towns. It was a fictional insert on a map produced by the General Drafting Company in the 1930s, on an empty road north from Roscoe in New York State. The toponym is an anagram of the names of the company director and his assistant: Otto G. Lindberg (OGL) and Ernest Alpers (EA). This ‘trap town’ worked, up to a point. Rand McNally’s map of the state duly identified a place on that lonely road called Algoe, and the General copyright breach. At this point fact and fiction begin to merge, because Rand McNally not only did not admit infringement, but they pointed to the fact that there was, indeed, an Algoe General Store on that spot. Hence there was an Algoe. Which is, of course, rather puzzling. Why was there an Algoe? It is because, when they were thinking about what to call their new store, recently built on that stretch of road, the owners looked at the General Drafting Company’s map and saw that it already had a name. So Algoe came into existence. The general store shut down years ago, but if you go to Google Earth, the same spot is still tagged ‘Algoe’.
Cairo, city of the Zabaleen:
Mokattam Village, sitting close to central Cairo but on a craggy hillside in the shadow of Mokattam Mountain, is a Coptic enclave, a unique Egyptian branch of the faith that is almost as old as Christianity itself. It is ‘one of Egypt’s many hidden places’. Here live the Zabaleen, Arabic for ‘garbage pickers’. Zabaleen are migrants, who arrived in Cairo in the mid-twentieth century, then being pushed out to this arid ground in 1969.
Within the international development community, the Zabaleen are famous. They are ‘far ahead of any modern “Green” initiatives’, according to Garbage Dreams, a recent documentary which follows the tribulations of three teenage Zabaleen boys.
Yet these plaudits have not shifted perceptions among the Cairenes. The public view of Garbage City is tinged with disdain, not just because of the smell but owing to the Zabaleen tradition of using pigs to consume organic waste. Egypt is, for the most part, a more tolerant place than many of its neighbours, but it is a 90 per cent Muslim country and attitudes to the Zabaleen can quickly veer from wrinkled noses and mild amusement to outright contempt. A government-imposed mass slaughter of the community’s pigs in 2009 was justified in terms of containing swine flu but, given there were no cases of swine flu in Egypt at the time, it was understandably interpreted within Mukattam Village and the wider Christian community as having been driven by religious hostility.
It seems obvious that they should be regarded as one of the city’s greatest assets, not a source of shame or pinched noses but of the proud boast: ‘Cairo, city of the Zabaleen’.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabet...
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/g...
Off Street View:
The very rich and the very poor have one thing in common: they’re not on Google Street View. The off-screen places of Street View are not only at the extreme ends of income, but this is where the most resilient of the hidden zones lie. Their stories tell us a lot about the changing relationship between wealth and visibility. It is rumoured that among the residents of Hidden Hills are famous names like Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Jennifer Lopez and Kim Kardashian. These days the wealthy – famous and non-famous alike – don’t want to be seen. Increasingly wealth and secrecy go together. It has started to seem like a natural pairing but, in fact, it’s a recent phenomenon.
The reason that Street View doesn’t venture into the warren-like world of the slums is not because the streets are too narrow for its camera car. Many are broad enough and, in any case, the cameras can and often are carried as backpacks. It is because it is assumed that Google users don’t want to see and the slum dwellers don’t want to be seen. Maybe it would make us feel bad, or the residents ashamed. But before we become too worked up about Google’s disappearing act, we need to consider a simple question: how do we know that the slums of Wanathamulla are there? Because Google Earth shows them. On conventional maps they are just a blank space. Google Earth and Street View are technologies of visibility, and they show up what is not officially acknowledged. Activists working in slums across the world have been turning to Google Earth as a tool to cajole governments into acknowledging and assisting hidden communities. The movement for mapping slums began in India, Sri Lanka’s giant neighbour. In the city of Sangli, for example, the slums were once just cartographic empty space. Google Earth changed that: they could no longer be denied or ignored. They now have recognised borders and a programme for rehabilitation.
The same thing is happening in Africa. In Nairobi a group of activist mappers who call themselves the Spatial Collective use handheld GPS devices to put the city’s slums on the map.
https://www.npr.org/sections/parallel...
“A place is a storied landscape, somewhere that has human meaning. But another thing we have started to learn, or relearn, is that places aren’t just about people; that they reflect our attempt to grasp and make sense of the non-human; the land and its many inhabitants that are forever around and beyond us. It can be an unnerving exchange, especially when what we hope to see is something purely natural, and what we find instead is our own reflection. Shorelines are waxing and waning with increasing speed, and old kingdoms, like Doggerland, as well as new ones in the once-inaccessible Arctic, are being revealed, demanding that we look at the landscape, and at the map, in new ways; as something in motion, unmoored by tradition.”
Geography is getting stranger: new islands are rising up, familiar territories are splintering and secret realms are cracking open their doors. The world’s unruly zones are multiplying and changing fast. With thirty-nine stories from thirty-nine extraordinary places, Alastair Bonnett tells us about the shifting nature of place and place-making.
Hostile Architecture:
From ubiquitous protrusions on window ledges to bus-shelter seats that pivot forward, from water sprinklers and loud muzak to hard tubular rests, from metal park benches with solid dividers to forests of pointed cement bollards under bridges, urban spaces are aggressively rejecting soft, human bodies.
We see these measures all the time within our urban environments, whether in London or Tokyo, but we fail to process their true intent. When you’re designed against, you know it. Other people might not see it, but you will. The message is clear: you are not a member of the public, at least not of the public that is welcome here.” The same is true of all defensive architecture. The psychological effect is devastating.
There is a wider problem, too. These measures do not and cannot distinguish the “vagrant” posterior from others considered more deserving. When we make it impossible for the dispossessed to rest their weary bodies at a bus shelter, we also make it impossible for the elderly, for the infirm, for the pregnant woman who has had a dizzy spell. By making the city less accepting of the human frame, we make it less welcoming to all humans. By making our environment more hostile, we become more hostile within it.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2...
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddes...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeyLE...
The Saharan Sand Wall:
The Saharan Sand Wall is the longest active military barrier in the world — a sand berm 1,367 miles long that is visible on Google Earth. Guarded by 90,000 Moroccan troops and bolstered with 7 million land mines, it has acted since the late 1980s as Morocco’s defense against the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, an essentially exiled people of 600,000 who mostly inhabit refugee camps in Algeria and Mauritania.
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/fea...
The Ferghana Valley:
The Ferghana Valley is at the centre of Asia, nearly 1,250 miles from the nearest ocean; the middle of the middle. It lies in the very heart of ‘Central Asia’, a rather nebulous but very central-sounding label that also puts it at the crossroads of three former Soviet states: Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
It is a riven heartland. The Ferghana Valley contains eight fractious enclaves. There are two marooned outposts of Tajikistan and four bits of Uzbekistan in that part of the valley that is in Kyrgyzstan, as well as one Tajik and one Kyrgyz territory in the part that is Uzbek. Although they appear as solid lines on most maps, many of the borders hereabouts are actually far from certain and very much disputed. Over recent years the valley’s many national boundaries have been witness to a lot of what the outside world usually classes as ‘ethnic violence���.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stratfor...
Tsunami Stones and Nuclear Markers:
The coastline of Japan is dotted with stone tablets, bearing warnings like "High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants,” and “Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis.” The Japanese are used to the power of nature, but the shock of the 11 March 2011 disaster, which is often referred to by the month and year as 3/11, has been profound. One of the consequences has been a renewed interest in the stones and an anguished search for new ways to send a message to subsequent generations.
How can we warn future generations? What can we do to create a mark in the landscape, some permanent alteration, which will make them sit up and listen? This is not just a dilemma for countries that suffer from tidal waves. The most profound challenge is for those many countries looking for somewhere to put nuclear waste, which will remain deadly for a hundred thousand years or even longer. How do we tell people to keep clear, to stay away from radioactive disposal sites, across such deep reaches of time? Recently the nuclear industry has been coming up with possible answers to this question, in part by drawing on the story of the tsunami stones.
They have turned to artists to come up with ideas. To date, these include creating children’s songs about radioactive waste that get carried down generations, and building a creative ‘laboratory’ above the waste sites in which each generation can think up new ways to explain the problem of nuclear waste. Another idea is to breed ‘Ray Cats’, genetically engineered felines that will start glowing when they are near radiation.
The tsunami stones, old and new, do important work, but it is time to admit that we can’t warn the distant future; we can’t buy off our guilt with stones, spikes, songs, luminous cats or anything else. With that acknowledgement should come another: the choice is between saying ‘let the future sort it out because we can’t’, or ‘we shouldn’t be creating lethal hazards for unborn generations’. The former position is so obviously irresponsible that it seems to me we are stuck with the latter. Our efforts need to go into creating cleaner types of energy supply. The tsunami stones determinedly exhort us to learn and listen; and one of the things they are saying is that we need to take responsibility for our own actions, and not pass the buck to the future.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-...
‘Dau’ Movie Set:
It is nearly unbelievable story of a Russian filmmaker who in the mid-2000s recreated a model city of Soviet-era Moscow, complete with apartments, electricity, and plumbing. The director required his cast to live there 24 hours a day and never break character. Actors began spying on one another and some were arrested by a secret police force that put them in jail alongside criminals brought in as extras from nearby jails.
Spratly Islands:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/s...
Trap Streets:
In cartography, a trap street is a fictitious entry in the form of a misrepresented street on a map, often outside the area the map nominally covers, for the purpose of "trapping" potential copyright violators of the map who, if caught, would be unable to explain the inclusion of the "trap street" on their map as innocent. On maps that are not of streets, other "copyright trap" features (such as nonexistent towns, or mountains with the wrong elevations) may be inserted or altered for the same purpose.
The most famous example of the insertion of a false place name on a map is the tiny settlement called Algoe, the town that’s namechecked in the film Paper Towns. It was a fictional insert on a map produced by the General Drafting Company in the 1930s, on an empty road north from Roscoe in New York State. The toponym is an anagram of the names of the company director and his assistant: Otto G. Lindberg (OGL) and Ernest Alpers (EA). This ‘trap town’ worked, up to a point. Rand McNally’s map of the state duly identified a place on that lonely road called Algoe, and the General copyright breach. At this point fact and fiction begin to merge, because Rand McNally not only did not admit infringement, but they pointed to the fact that there was, indeed, an Algoe General Store on that spot. Hence there was an Algoe. Which is, of course, rather puzzling. Why was there an Algoe? It is because, when they were thinking about what to call their new store, recently built on that stretch of road, the owners looked at the General Drafting Company’s map and saw that it already had a name. So Algoe came into existence. The general store shut down years ago, but if you go to Google Earth, the same spot is still tagged ‘Algoe’.
Cairo, city of the Zabaleen:
Mokattam Village, sitting close to central Cairo but on a craggy hillside in the shadow of Mokattam Mountain, is a Coptic enclave, a unique Egyptian branch of the faith that is almost as old as Christianity itself. It is ‘one of Egypt’s many hidden places’. Here live the Zabaleen, Arabic for ‘garbage pickers’. Zabaleen are migrants, who arrived in Cairo in the mid-twentieth century, then being pushed out to this arid ground in 1969.
Within the international development community, the Zabaleen are famous. They are ‘far ahead of any modern “Green” initiatives’, according to Garbage Dreams, a recent documentary which follows the tribulations of three teenage Zabaleen boys.
Yet these plaudits have not shifted perceptions among the Cairenes. The public view of Garbage City is tinged with disdain, not just because of the smell but owing to the Zabaleen tradition of using pigs to consume organic waste. Egypt is, for the most part, a more tolerant place than many of its neighbours, but it is a 90 per cent Muslim country and attitudes to the Zabaleen can quickly veer from wrinkled noses and mild amusement to outright contempt. A government-imposed mass slaughter of the community’s pigs in 2009 was justified in terms of containing swine flu but, given there were no cases of swine flu in Egypt at the time, it was understandably interpreted within Mukattam Village and the wider Christian community as having been driven by religious hostility.
It seems obvious that they should be regarded as one of the city’s greatest assets, not a source of shame or pinched noses but of the proud boast: ‘Cairo, city of the Zabaleen’.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabet...
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/g...
Off Street View:
The very rich and the very poor have one thing in common: they’re not on Google Street View. The off-screen places of Street View are not only at the extreme ends of income, but this is where the most resilient of the hidden zones lie. Their stories tell us a lot about the changing relationship between wealth and visibility. It is rumoured that among the residents of Hidden Hills are famous names like Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Jennifer Lopez and Kim Kardashian. These days the wealthy – famous and non-famous alike – don’t want to be seen. Increasingly wealth and secrecy go together. It has started to seem like a natural pairing but, in fact, it’s a recent phenomenon.
The reason that Street View doesn’t venture into the warren-like world of the slums is not because the streets are too narrow for its camera car. Many are broad enough and, in any case, the cameras can and often are carried as backpacks. It is because it is assumed that Google users don’t want to see and the slum dwellers don’t want to be seen. Maybe it would make us feel bad, or the residents ashamed. But before we become too worked up about Google’s disappearing act, we need to consider a simple question: how do we know that the slums of Wanathamulla are there? Because Google Earth shows them. On conventional maps they are just a blank space. Google Earth and Street View are technologies of visibility, and they show up what is not officially acknowledged. Activists working in slums across the world have been turning to Google Earth as a tool to cajole governments into acknowledging and assisting hidden communities. The movement for mapping slums began in India, Sri Lanka’s giant neighbour. In the city of Sangli, for example, the slums were once just cartographic empty space. Google Earth changed that: they could no longer be denied or ignored. They now have recognised borders and a programme for rehabilitation.
The same thing is happening in Africa. In Nairobi a group of activist mappers who call themselves the Spatial Collective use handheld GPS devices to put the city’s slums on the map.
https://www.npr.org/sections/parallel...
“A place is a storied landscape, somewhere that has human meaning. But another thing we have started to learn, or relearn, is that places aren’t just about people; that they reflect our attempt to grasp and make sense of the non-human; the land and its many inhabitants that are forever around and beyond us. It can be an unnerving exchange, especially when what we hope to see is something purely natural, and what we find instead is our own reflection. Shorelines are waxing and waning with increasing speed, and old kingdoms, like Doggerland, as well as new ones in the once-inaccessible Arctic, are being revealed, demanding that we look at the landscape, and at the map, in new ways; as something in motion, unmoored by tradition.”
June 29, 2024
The only reason I have given this book two stars is because Alastair Bonnett probably could write a good book on this topic if he had:
1.) The time and resources to properly visit and research the places he is writing about.
2.) Restricted himself to a few chosen places/themes and researched them in depth
I can't take Mr. Bonnett seriously as a commentator on and/or explorer of new places when he devotes the same six pages he gives to 'Magical London' to 'The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant' and if you can't see the problem then I am not the reviewer you should be reading.
What we have here, at its worst, are summaries of barely Wikipedia depth or interest of some possibly interesting places and/or concepts. The chapter on 'Dau Movie Set' is a good example.
I'd never heard of 'Dau', which may reflect how hopelessly out-of-touch I am, but I was disappointed at how little depth his examination had. Although told all about the immersive set with hundreds of actors living in this reconstruction of a 1950s 'sealed' Soviet city having to wear uncomfortable, badly made Soviet clothes and eat poor Soviet foods etc. and hanging around for months 'living' their character even when no filming was going on. It never seems to have crossed his mind to ask did the stars like Gerard Depardieu do this or was only the hundreds of unnames 'support' actors who were put through psychological and financial bullying to keep them on set?
The other example that simply annoyed me was the piece on Christiania the one time hippy/squatter enclave within Amsterdam. For those of us who knew of or directly experienced Christiana in its heyday as an alternative hippy/squatter haven his visit to today's Christiania, which is no more than a 'gated community' for elderly hippies, is almost painful. What is worse is that while Professor Bonnett acknowledges that Christiania has changed he doesn't seem to understand, or at least doesn't convey, how much it has changed nor has he placed the changes in any context. Christiania was born of the same 1960s alternate lifestyle movement that saw attempts at communal living started throughout Europe and North America. Christiania is unusual because it managed to change and adapt in ways that allowed some of its early members to remain in control and force out the younger generation of rebels coming after them (please see my footnote *1 below). Christiania now is not an alternate space or lifestyle, it is the ghost of one. The only difference between it and Spahn's Ranch and all the other long empty sites of communal living is that Christiania was located in Amsterdam on prime real estate.
A real in depth examination of places like the movie set of Dau or the history of Christiania could be fascinating and worthwhile. But a collection of superficial tales like this is just frustrating. I almost regret giving it two stars.
*1 A brilliant, and very funny, portrayal of this process of the 'first' generation in a hippy commune turning into a repressive regime forcing out the young who might upset their applecart is to be found in George K. Ilsey's novel 'Man Bug'. It is only one facet of a truly wonderful novel.
1.) The time and resources to properly visit and research the places he is writing about.
2.) Restricted himself to a few chosen places/themes and researched them in depth
I can't take Mr. Bonnett seriously as a commentator on and/or explorer of new places when he devotes the same six pages he gives to 'Magical London' to 'The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant' and if you can't see the problem then I am not the reviewer you should be reading.
What we have here, at its worst, are summaries of barely Wikipedia depth or interest of some possibly interesting places and/or concepts. The chapter on 'Dau Movie Set' is a good example.
I'd never heard of 'Dau', which may reflect how hopelessly out-of-touch I am, but I was disappointed at how little depth his examination had. Although told all about the immersive set with hundreds of actors living in this reconstruction of a 1950s 'sealed' Soviet city having to wear uncomfortable, badly made Soviet clothes and eat poor Soviet foods etc. and hanging around for months 'living' their character even when no filming was going on. It never seems to have crossed his mind to ask did the stars like Gerard Depardieu do this or was only the hundreds of unnames 'support' actors who were put through psychological and financial bullying to keep them on set?
The other example that simply annoyed me was the piece on Christiania the one time hippy/squatter enclave within Amsterdam. For those of us who knew of or directly experienced Christiana in its heyday as an alternative hippy/squatter haven his visit to today's Christiania, which is no more than a 'gated community' for elderly hippies, is almost painful. What is worse is that while Professor Bonnett acknowledges that Christiania has changed he doesn't seem to understand, or at least doesn't convey, how much it has changed nor has he placed the changes in any context. Christiania was born of the same 1960s alternate lifestyle movement that saw attempts at communal living started throughout Europe and North America. Christiania is unusual because it managed to change and adapt in ways that allowed some of its early members to remain in control and force out the younger generation of rebels coming after them (please see my footnote *1 below). Christiania now is not an alternate space or lifestyle, it is the ghost of one. The only difference between it and Spahn's Ranch and all the other long empty sites of communal living is that Christiania was located in Amsterdam on prime real estate.
A real in depth examination of places like the movie set of Dau or the history of Christiania could be fascinating and worthwhile. But a collection of superficial tales like this is just frustrating. I almost regret giving it two stars.
*1 A brilliant, and very funny, portrayal of this process of the 'first' generation in a hippy commune turning into a repressive regime forcing out the young who might upset their applecart is to be found in George K. Ilsey's novel 'Man Bug'. It is only one facet of a truly wonderful novel.
April 12, 2018
I've long been fascinated by placemaking, although this was a different take to what I was expecting. This had an element of Tim Marshall's Prisoners of Geography, which I liked. I really liked the mix of locations the author chose, from islands most people have never heard to places like ISIL that dominate the news cycle. My personal favorite was the lens with which he looked at Jerusalem and explored the question of whether religion was the best way to consider these layers. I also enjoyed the mix of naturally occurring locations vs. man made ones such as Christiana. THe addition of warnings of places, such as Japan's tsunami markers and warnings of radioactive material was also an interesting addition. An interesting read.
June 11, 2021
Nunca creí que un libro centrado en geografía me pudiera resultar tan adictivo, pero es realmente hipnótico. Habla de lugares extraños, desde utopías modernas hasta sitios horribles, de curiosidades del mundo como zonas de nómadas, enclaves donde conviven culturas entremezcladas o ciudades futuristas que se quedaron a medio construir. Y te entran unas ganas locas de salir por la puerta e ir a curiosear esos lugares.
March 4, 2022
Dopo aver letteralmente divorato Fuori dalle Mappe, non potevo esimermi da leggere questo nuovo libro di Bonnett in cui continua l'esplorazione di zone della terra che mettono in crisi il concetto stesso di luogo. Un libro sicuramente consigliato a chi ha amato la sua prima pubblicazione italiana e a chi, come me, è affascinato dal rapporto tra l'essere umano e la geografia terrestre.
August 1, 2020
I’ve enjoyed the previous books in this series, and will always enjoy an entertaining book about geography and maps, but strangely this one felt flatter. It seemed to jump from place to place without any real depth. Still interesting, but unlikely to dip into it again.
April 19, 2018
Eclectic mix of essays in Beyond the Map is sure to have something for everyone.
How unique islands are formed and claimed is described in Part I. Part II is about how some small nations and communities were developed. Part III describes utopias of religion, lifestyle, or technology. Part IV and V deal with haunted and hidden places respectively.
I thought that Parts I and II were rather dry and slow. Geology and politics are not my favorite subjects. However, I’m glad I kept reading because Beyond the Map’s later parts were really interesting. There is a succinct essay about ISIL that is marvelous. Several of the utopias are tourist attractions that I would love to visit. The haunted places of Part IV are more urban legends and ‘psychogeography’ than ghost stories. Still they are interesting short essays. Places hidden from Google Maps Street View, paper maps purposely printed incorrectly, secret caves and real undersea cities make up the final section of this book.
The author’s life sounds exciting. While some of the essays live up to that standard, unfortunately much of the book does not. 3 stars.
Thanks to the publisher, University of Chicago Press, and NetGalley for an advanced copy.
How unique islands are formed and claimed is described in Part I. Part II is about how some small nations and communities were developed. Part III describes utopias of religion, lifestyle, or technology. Part IV and V deal with haunted and hidden places respectively.
I thought that Parts I and II were rather dry and slow. Geology and politics are not my favorite subjects. However, I’m glad I kept reading because Beyond the Map’s later parts were really interesting. There is a succinct essay about ISIL that is marvelous. Several of the utopias are tourist attractions that I would love to visit. The haunted places of Part IV are more urban legends and ‘psychogeography’ than ghost stories. Still they are interesting short essays. Places hidden from Google Maps Street View, paper maps purposely printed incorrectly, secret caves and real undersea cities make up the final section of this book.
The author’s life sounds exciting. While some of the essays live up to that standard, unfortunately much of the book does not. 3 stars.
Thanks to the publisher, University of Chicago Press, and NetGalley for an advanced copy.
September 12, 2018
Breezy and well-travelled, Bonnett is an able and engaging guide to oddities and strange locations that pushes at the imagination without tearing it asunder. While he hints at the need to revise our imaginative visions of the world to be better able to include underwater vessels, exclusive utopias, disappearing and reappearing islands, and immaterial organizations of space that dictate behaviours in places, his overall framework is that of a tour guide and not a scholar, a visitor who might not transgress into critique or approval.
What you can expect: short chapters, from four to seven pages, that discuss the major highlights of a given surprising locale, broken up into sections such as: islands, enclaves, utopias, ghosts, and hidden places. The first section - on islands - is the most compelling, as perhaps so too the final section's passages on the Conshelf Undersea Station, with many sections after making only a token case for internal logic in their classification. More often than not, these small chapters only whet one's interest.
Entertaining enough, but rarely substantial or truly engaging. An interesting book.
What you can expect: short chapters, from four to seven pages, that discuss the major highlights of a given surprising locale, broken up into sections such as: islands, enclaves, utopias, ghosts, and hidden places. The first section - on islands - is the most compelling, as perhaps so too the final section's passages on the Conshelf Undersea Station, with many sections after making only a token case for internal logic in their classification. More often than not, these small chapters only whet one's interest.
Entertaining enough, but rarely substantial or truly engaging. An interesting book.
December 23, 2021
Los lugares no son estáticos. Islas aparecen y desaparecen. Grandes extensiones de tierra se hunden y otras quedan inundadas. Los mapas tampoco son la verdad revelada de un lugar y muchas veces se les escapa la inmensidad, u otras responden caprichos. El título en inglés de este libro dice mucho, Beyond the map, porque los lugares trascienden el lugar e incluso una ubicación física.
Y el libro también puede leerse en clave de manifiesto político por cómo habitamos, andamos, desandamos los lugares.
Además, nos recuerda que este planeta siempre será un lugar inexplorado, por más que lo intentemos, por más que tengamos toda la tecnología que nos dé la ilusión de que conocemos cada rincón.
Y el libro también puede leerse en clave de manifiesto político por cómo habitamos, andamos, desandamos los lugares.
Además, nos recuerda que este planeta siempre será un lugar inexplorado, por más que lo intentemos, por más que tengamos toda la tecnología que nos dé la ilusión de que conocemos cada rincón.
June 18, 2022
Bonito por fuera y por dentro. Una de esas ediciones cuidaditas en tapa dura de Blackie Books. El autor, geógrafo y viajero, nos ofrece una lista de pequeñas descripciones de lugares de los que nunca se habla… pero que están ahí (a veces muy cerca, a veces muy lejos). Desde su reflexión sobre las isletas de las carreteras y lo difícil que para un peatón es llegar a ellas, hasta islas que son creadas por el hombre, tierras que aparecen con la bajamar, zonas de nadie (por lo oportuno del tema me sorprendió la de explicación de las relaciones entre Rusia y el Donbass)... En fin, un montón de cosas que no sabía y que, lamentablemente, no tardaré en olvidar. Pero ahí estará el librito.
March 26, 2019
I love the concept of this book regarding unconventional places or geographies, but I found it more to be a random collection of anecdotes with less thought or analysis connecting them.
October 31, 2024
Un libro sobre curiosidades del mundo. No profundiza mucho en ninguna, pero es perfecto para saber un poco de cada lugar.
August 30, 2018
There are some writers where the more you are aware of their worldview and approach, the less you like reading what they have to say, and that is certainly the case here. As is often the case, this author and I have similar interests with regards to quirky geography and the importance of having a sense of place [1]. Unfortunately, similar interests with very dissimilar worldviews makes for often unpleasant reading, and that is the case here. This book, which was mercifully quick to read, would have been vastly better and vastly more enjoyable had the author spent more time talking about the places and less time sharing his views, because his views were far less enjoyable than the discussion of the history and issues of the odd places the author chose to discuss. This is becoming an increasing problem in many recent books, where people think that their own perspective is what is interesting when in reality it happens to be the odd but compelling subjects talked about by someone whose perspective is antithetical to the reader but who is blind to his own shortcomings as a guide.
This book is almost 300 pages and discusses 39 places in five parts. The author talks about unruly islands, pointing out the question of land rising while other land sinks, making some bogus comments about climate change and showing his leftist hand-wringing, and examining the problem of the Spratly islands and China's provocations of its neighbors. After that the author looks at enclaves and uncertain nations, showing his lack of persistence in being able to handle the dialects of Ladin, his lack of religious knowledge in examining the Eruv of Bondi Beach, and his interest in Western Sahara, one I happen to share, along with a challenging look at the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and its issues with contemporary Catholic leadership. The author spends some time dealing with some utopian and dystopian places ranginh from Sao Paolo's city of helicopters to the largely defunct (thankfully) Islamic State of the Levant, along with the wealthy but itinerant small business owners who fancy themselves nomads. The author looks at ghostly places that range from a suicide haven of a Japanese station to Newcastle's skywalks to the forgotten British graveyard in Shimla, India. After that comes a look at hidden places including an address used for tax havens, places not included on Google Maps' street view, trap streets on maps used to foil counterfeiters, and China's underground military bases on Hainan.
Ultimately, this author makes his political worldview very clear in this book, and I dislike almost all of it. The author celebrates paganism and the phony geomancy of many who practice it today, but shows little or no interest in or understanding or sympathy towards Christianity or Judaism, even if he interacts with it quite a bit in his journeys. He makes it plain that this list of odd places, like that in his other works, is not meant as a definitive list but is rather meant to provoke the reader into seeing other places that are like these ones, which is easy enough to do. If the author's politics are dire and his perspective annoying and not particularly worthwhile, the author's love of odd places and seeking to understand what they say about us as human beings and about the behavior of businesses and governments and ordinary people whose behavior is shaped by our environment in ways we often do not realize is worth examining, even if we come to (hopefully) very different conclusions and judgments to those of the author himself.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
This book is almost 300 pages and discusses 39 places in five parts. The author talks about unruly islands, pointing out the question of land rising while other land sinks, making some bogus comments about climate change and showing his leftist hand-wringing, and examining the problem of the Spratly islands and China's provocations of its neighbors. After that the author looks at enclaves and uncertain nations, showing his lack of persistence in being able to handle the dialects of Ladin, his lack of religious knowledge in examining the Eruv of Bondi Beach, and his interest in Western Sahara, one I happen to share, along with a challenging look at the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and its issues with contemporary Catholic leadership. The author spends some time dealing with some utopian and dystopian places ranginh from Sao Paolo's city of helicopters to the largely defunct (thankfully) Islamic State of the Levant, along with the wealthy but itinerant small business owners who fancy themselves nomads. The author looks at ghostly places that range from a suicide haven of a Japanese station to Newcastle's skywalks to the forgotten British graveyard in Shimla, India. After that comes a look at hidden places including an address used for tax havens, places not included on Google Maps' street view, trap streets on maps used to foil counterfeiters, and China's underground military bases on Hainan.
Ultimately, this author makes his political worldview very clear in this book, and I dislike almost all of it. The author celebrates paganism and the phony geomancy of many who practice it today, but shows little or no interest in or understanding or sympathy towards Christianity or Judaism, even if he interacts with it quite a bit in his journeys. He makes it plain that this list of odd places, like that in his other works, is not meant as a definitive list but is rather meant to provoke the reader into seeing other places that are like these ones, which is easy enough to do. If the author's politics are dire and his perspective annoying and not particularly worthwhile, the author's love of odd places and seeking to understand what they say about us as human beings and about the behavior of businesses and governments and ordinary people whose behavior is shaped by our environment in ways we often do not realize is worth examining, even if we come to (hopefully) very different conclusions and judgments to those of the author himself.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2018...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
June 7, 2018
An Idiosyncratic and Engaging Survey
The premise, a survey of places that exist beyond standard maps, is a good one. Our guide, Alastair Bonnett, is congenial, well-informed, and opinionated in a mild and amiable fashion. The execution is clever and imaginative.
This book will have something for everyone, mostly because Bonnett has devoted great creative energy to identifying what sorts of "places" qualify as beyond-the-map. So, sure, we get islands that rise out of the sea and then disappear, and we get abandoned places, hidden places, enclaves, utopias, and so on. But Bonnett works more variations than that. You also get other "spaces" - an Eruv on Bondi Beach, the state? of Malta, communities defined by exotic languages, virtual places, abandoned movie sets, and underground and undersea installations. Some of this is fascinating, some is a bit coy, (a garden on a traffic island), but all of it is interesting.
This doesn't strike me as a cover-to-cover read. It's a dip in and out sort of book, and one can read as much or as little at a time as one cares for. That's not a criticism. Bonnett is good company. Some bits are brief or superficial, and some seem to be in the book just to round out the premise, but the fast pace, good humor, and wide range offer a pleasant and thought provoking diversion, and might well prompt the reader to further investigate places of special interest. This struck me as a real find for any armchair traveller with a taste for the eccentric.
(Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)
The premise, a survey of places that exist beyond standard maps, is a good one. Our guide, Alastair Bonnett, is congenial, well-informed, and opinionated in a mild and amiable fashion. The execution is clever and imaginative.
This book will have something for everyone, mostly because Bonnett has devoted great creative energy to identifying what sorts of "places" qualify as beyond-the-map. So, sure, we get islands that rise out of the sea and then disappear, and we get abandoned places, hidden places, enclaves, utopias, and so on. But Bonnett works more variations than that. You also get other "spaces" - an Eruv on Bondi Beach, the state? of Malta, communities defined by exotic languages, virtual places, abandoned movie sets, and underground and undersea installations. Some of this is fascinating, some is a bit coy, (a garden on a traffic island), but all of it is interesting.
This doesn't strike me as a cover-to-cover read. It's a dip in and out sort of book, and one can read as much or as little at a time as one cares for. That's not a criticism. Bonnett is good company. Some bits are brief or superficial, and some seem to be in the book just to round out the premise, but the fast pace, good humor, and wide range offer a pleasant and thought provoking diversion, and might well prompt the reader to further investigate places of special interest. This struck me as a real find for any armchair traveller with a taste for the eccentric.
(Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)
June 7, 2018
The premise is awesome: the author looks at "the world's most extraordinary spaces -- many unmarked on any official map -- all of which challenge our assumptions about what we know -- or think we know -- about our world". Who wouldn't be intrigued by that?
One cannot fault Mr. Bonnett for the wide scope of subjects covered but unfortunately I found the chapters themselves a bit uneven. I found some chapters, such as the ones on the British Graveyard in Shimla and the Conshelf Undersea Station, quite moving. I found others rather slow and even ponderous.
In the end, I am glad I read it. I liked this book, but I wanted to love it.
One cannot fault Mr. Bonnett for the wide scope of subjects covered but unfortunately I found the chapters themselves a bit uneven. I found some chapters, such as the ones on the British Graveyard in Shimla and the Conshelf Undersea Station, quite moving. I found others rather slow and even ponderous.
In the end, I am glad I read it. I liked this book, but I wanted to love it.
August 26, 2018
This book of short essays by a professor of social geography contains some intriguing considerations of places that are unusual or overlooked, such as Copenhagen's Christiania and a town eroding into the sea in the same place where an early people once lived and hunted. My favourites included the consideration of an abandoned "Boys' Camp" for the children of miners' families in Wales and the never-properly-realized "skywalk" project in the author's hometown, with its stairways to nowhere. Rather than visiting some list of these particular places yourself, the author recommends taking an unusual route in your own hometown, with your head up and attuned to your environment.
August 10, 2019
I really enjoyed Bonnett's second foray into generalist writing about 'hurtling and disorienting' geographies.
Indeed I enjoyed this book much more than 'Off the Map'Off the Map: Lost Spaces, Invisible Cities, Forgotten Islands, Feral Places and What They Tell Us About the World. He offers many personal examples of this disorienting geography and at the end makes a call for everyone to go out and explore.
Indeed I enjoyed this book much more than 'Off the Map'Off the Map: Lost Spaces, Invisible Cities, Forgotten Islands, Feral Places and What They Tell Us About the World. He offers many personal examples of this disorienting geography and at the end makes a call for everyone to go out and explore.
June 19, 2025
don't remember how I picked this up from the library — looking for something along the line of the power of geography perhaps. it's interesting, but not terribly interesting, feeling a bit like a collection of blog posts or short newspaper articles without all the photos. the book is also outdated in the limited information given about ISIS and the preoccupation with brexit. a few of the articles felt like the author was just trying to meet a word count, with no theme stronger than 'here are some interesting "places"'. there's nothing wrong with the book exactly, but I didn't find much of a point.
June 19, 2018
From Netgalley for review
This is a fun and quirky book all about those forgotten, little known about, or just hard to fin places in the world, the historian and collector of oddball trivia in me loved that about this book. I was rather sad at the lack of maps, I mean I know the book's name is Beyond the Map, but I would love to have had a few maps showing exactly where these places were, I adore cartography and was saddened by the lack of maps. Other than that little gripe I really enjoyed reading this book!
This is a fun and quirky book all about those forgotten, little known about, or just hard to fin places in the world, the historian and collector of oddball trivia in me loved that about this book. I was rather sad at the lack of maps, I mean I know the book's name is Beyond the Map, but I would love to have had a few maps showing exactly where these places were, I adore cartography and was saddened by the lack of maps. Other than that little gripe I really enjoyed reading this book!
November 27, 2019
Following on from his other excellent book, OFF THE MAP, this book continues the author search for solace and absurdity within the strange and eclectic corners of the planet.
From modern utopias, caliphates and traffic islands to garbage cities, haunted places and abandoned movie sets, these subjects are both geographical and geopolitical and make you question the very world around you and what actually constitutes a named "place", beyond that of basic abstraction.
Very well written and easily comforting.
From modern utopias, caliphates and traffic islands to garbage cities, haunted places and abandoned movie sets, these subjects are both geographical and geopolitical and make you question the very world around you and what actually constitutes a named "place", beyond that of basic abstraction.
Very well written and easily comforting.
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