Customer Reviews

The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(25)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

Miles Harvey has succeeded in telling a story that not only involves the history of cartography and one man's attempt to profit from stealing the past, but also a personal journey of his own in interpreting the map of the life of thief Gilbert Bland. The journey takes many turns, not too many as to obscure the original destination, but enough well-researched avenues to enhance the experience for the educated reader.

It's like the PBS series "Connections" meets "America's Most Wanted"; Harvey turns ordinary library books into victims of malice aforethought as he traces the crimes and tries on the mind of the criminal.

Finishing this book, I know I'll want to read it again; like an Umberto Eco book, I'll get something new out of it with each read.

What an unexpected delight. I thought it would be an interesting crime caper, but that was really just the launching point (and central plot line) for a fascinating exploration of a series of intriguing ideas. I had no idea what a profound role map had played in the history or exploration, or especially how maps served as a model for much of the way we think.

Stunning to discover how much of my own mental process mirrored the maps, right down to the imaginary creatures and utopian lands littered around their edges. They have become so integrated into the way we conceive and process our world that they'd disappeared from view, taken for granted, like oxygen. I had studied enough history to grasp how much my world-view was founded on the ideas of the Enlightenment, of Darwin, Einstein and Freud. I had no idea how much was resting on maps. It was jaw-dropping sometimes to see them revealed.

I have to say, I had no idea I would find those subjects interesting either. But I was slyly drawn into these worlds, and found them more fascinating than the crime caper that originally grabbed my attention.

I hope I'm not making this sound like some plodding historical bore. It actually moves along quite quickly, and the modern story of this weird little man in this strange little world is fascinating stuff. (The chapter on the big map-trader Arader was a hoot.) That was what I picked the book up for, and it was everything I expected, but Harvey wove this little adventure seamlessly into a host of other explorations, and those are what made this book truly magical. Really remarkable stuff.

When I first heard that The Island of Lost Maps had its genesis as a magazine article, I wondered whether it might suffer upon being expanded into a book. My fears were unfounded. Here's a book that not only explores a crime and tries to get into the mind of the thief, it is a wonderful look at the history of cartography, the world of rare maps, their life in the auction houses, etc. I turned page after page, greedily devouring Harvey's deft prose. Some critics have faulted Harvey for intruding too much into the story, but don't believe them. He is engaging, inquiring and downright likeable as an everyman narrator who's been bitten by his curiosity. We should all give into our obsessions as he has in writing this book. Bravo!

Sometimes just the experience of holding a book is enough to excite the reader about it. Miles Harvey's The Island of Lost Maps is one of those books. Handsomely bound and richly appointed, the book itself is evocative of lost treasures and forgotten stories. The prints which accompany the text are well selected and are themselves mute testament to stories of an age gone by. Physically this book is a most appropriate vessel for the modern story of a self- proclaimed antiquarian (Gilbert Bland) who was caught purloining some of the world's rarest maps from unsuspecting libraries across North America.

From the onset Harvey does a fine job in using the story of the map thief as a narrative thread to which he attaches informative and entertaining anecdotes about such things as the history of cartography, the modern hobby (and business) of collecting ancient maps and mapmaking itself. Added to this, some brief sketches of some of the modern "players" in the map business and a few historical reconstructions of significant cartographic events guarantee that Harvey has constructed a book which is sure to engage and inform even the most supercilious reader. As Harvey admits in the text there are some unexplained holes in the story of Gilbert Bland, but Harvey is able, by evoking the spirit of cartography to seemingly enmesh the reader in his own quest to discover more about the enigmatic Mr Bland. Through this book the reader quickly comes to feel that they are on their own quest for the truth within the book; a quality which makes this book the outstanding read that it is. If there is one drawback to this book, it is the sentimental ending; which is unnecessarily romantic and self-involved. The reader spends much of the book engrossed in the tales of cartographic history and following the bizarre trail of Gilbert Bland only to be confronted near the end with the author's new-age spiritual navel-gazing. Harvey's weak attempt to equate his quest for the truth about Bland to the experiences of past explorers is a jarring and unwelcome literary quagmire which the reader is likely to circumvent. Harvey's moaning about his own revelations during his search are hardly the stuff of Conrad and should have been left out of a book which deals with real experiences of discovery.

Then again it says on the jacket flap that the writer is a frequent contributor to OUTSIDE magazine. I've read OUTSIDE frequently and found that most of its contributors can't so much as step into the woods without proclaiming an epiphany- perhaps its endemic to such writers that nothing in life can be experienced without questioning everything else. Regardless, the new-age angst introduced at the end serves only to weaken what was otherwise a strong narrative flow. Still, the book is a gem, and ... the rich world contained within surely is worth the price of admission.

This book seems to provoke all-out adoration or real disappointment. If you're looking for a conventional true-crime story, pick something else. This book is about history, values, the age of exploration, and the map of the human mind. It doesn't adhere to the true-crime genre at all. It doesn't adhere to any genre, there's really never been anything quite like it.

If that appeals to you, check it out. It was a wondrous experience for me. If you prefer your books to follow established conventions, look into John Grisham or Tom Clancy.

You'll run across a couple of great characters throughout the book, my favorite was Mr. Atlas the map collector, and they are interesting and fun. I also liked the part about what happened to Columbus after his first, highly acclaimed voyage. But I found the author's phsyco babble about himself intrusive and it put me off. In the end, although his pursuit of the story behind the thefts took him on some interesting detours, he was basically unsuccessful in finding out anything about Bland or the thefts beyond what was reported in the newspapers in 100 words or less. And come on - the Island of Lost Maps is a pile of paper in the middle of a table? That was weak. I think the title is misleading and raises expectations that it can't fulfill.

Miles Harvey in The Island of Lost Maps (A True Story of Cartographic Crime) takes the story of a recent map thief, aptly named Gilbert Bland, and uses this story as a way to map a journey that winds and weaves its way through history, map-collecting, library security and a mixture of biography and autobiography. The wonderful aspect of this is that most of it is quite interesting and will capture most readers quickly and take them easily and pleasureably through its pages, even if one never thought he had an interest in this topic. The most fascinating aspects revolve around the subjects of map-making history and the more recent business of map collecting. Both of these were fascinating and eye-opening. The ending chapters are a little weaker as the book runs slowly out of steam but the reader should be exhausted and thrilled by that point, at any rate. A wonderful first non-fiction book.

When the book sticks to the story -- a detective tale about a man who stole dozens of rare maps from libraries -- it can be reasonably interesting. When it discusses the arcane world of map-collecting, it can be downright fascinating. Unfortunately, Harvey pads this book out with many tedious passages of pop psychology, in which he tries to get inside the mind of the thief. There are two problems with this: One, Harvey barely even met the man; two, the man turns out to be boring. Also, Harvey pads the book with lengthy passages of excruciating self-analysis, many of which are comically over-dramatized. At one point, he compares his "search" for the thief to Stanley's search for Livingstone. Everything in the book is over-dramatized, as in this sentence to begin one chapter, "Then came the hour when I dissolved into the map." (This is his way of saying that he was daydreaming). Even the "island of lost maps" of the title turns out to be just a pompous name for what is, in reality, a pile of old maps on an FBI guy's desk. Harvey had a good, if small, story to tell here. He should have just told it.

Gilbert Bland, a Florida antique dealer was arrested outside the Peabody Library in Baltimore in 1995. In his possession were some of the library's rare maps; Gilbert had neatly sliced them out of Atlases with a razor. As Bland's story unfolds we learn that over the years he had stolen nearly 250 maps worth $500,000, and had subsequently sold them to unsuspecting map collectors. For this, the author calls him "the Al Capone of cartography, the greatest American map thief in history." THE ISLAND OF LOST MAPS is the story of Gilbert Bland and cartography.

When the book sticks to cartography it's fine. Especially when we read about some of the quirky behavior of the "curious subculture made up of map historians, map librarians, map dealers, and map collectors - all gripped by an obsession both surreal and sublime." The story of W. Graham Arader III, the "Bill Gates" of the map world is a case in point. He operates in the rarefied air of map collecting where a single map can sell for $2,000,000. Also, what word but eccentric, could be used to describe a little trick used by cartographers to keep tabs on their work. They draw a ridiculously named cul-de-sac somewhere on their map. If another company's street map depicts this 'trap street', the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the original was plagiarized.

The book disappoints when the subject moves from cartography to Gilbert Bland - for two reasons. Look no further than the man's name for the first. Gilbert was...well...bland. A map dealer who knew him is quoted as saying "there was no personality...nothing there." Therefore when the book spends a lot of time exploring motives, looking at Bland's Vietnam service record, interviewing his family - we lose interest. How else can it be if the subject is a boring person? The second let down comes, when, failing to get Gilbert's side of the story (Bland, while in jail, and after his release, refused to talk to Mr Harvey), the author then engages in a bit of psychoanalysis. According to Mr Harvey, Gilbert Bland is like Sir Walter Raleigh in that they were both motivated by an urge for conquest. Also, do we really need to explore the relationship between Bland and his father? Mr Harvey gets a little bit metaphysical which made me get a little bit queasy. "With each passing month, it seemed that I was searching less for an actual person named Gilbert Bland than for some dark and unexplored part of my own existence."

Read the book for the history and folklore of cartography and for the interesting personal stories of those involved in map making and map collecting....

The reviewer below who said that if you are looking for crime fiction you should skip this book is right. This is more along the lines of a book like the Professor and the Madman or Longitude. The strongest parts of the narrative revolve around the exploration of map collectors and the map world. The portrait of the brash Arader is worth the price of admission. Being somewhat of a geek myself, I loved all the library tales too -- I remember being in the Rare book room at Dartmouth and noting how easy it would be to steal or ruin priceless manuscripts. You'll learn all about the insular world of map collecting, libararies (great portrait of the Peabody) and those who fananatically devote themselves to mapmaking. I also love the idea of the Island of Maps: the FBI's collection of hundreds of maps that Bland had stolen. The author looks with awe as he sees hundreds of famous maps just piled up in an FBI storage area looking lost. At some points, this book recalled some of Eco's works like the Island of the Day Before.

I found the authors ruminations towards the end of the book interesting, but agree that overall they might have been saved for another venue. Overall this is a fascinating read, not to mention a beautiful book to look at it. If he wanders a bit, at least he makes the diversions enjoyable.