Customer Reviews

Off the Map: The Curious Histories of Place-Names

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

After reading only the first 35 pages, I had come across literally dozens of inaccuracies in Mr. Nelson's book. Easily over half the facts lack context, are misinterpreted, or just plain wrong. Examples: 1) Saying that Gaza is "now held by Egypt" [It's now under control of the Palestinian authority and ultimately still under Israeli control.] 2) "Before World War II, Silesia and Pomerania were located southwest of Poland, between Germany and Czechoslovakia" [Pomerania was NORTHwest of Poland, and Poland directly bordered Germany - no Czechoslovakia in between] With the amazing number of errors in this book, I would recommend it for only one reason: It would make an excellent history/geography project to have students go through and correct all the errors.

This seems to be a hastily written book, which may be described as a real "manual of inaccuracies". To cite only a few (I spotted dozens of them): "the Basque Provinces of Asturias, Galicia, Catalonia and Valencia" (no comments! ); "Chili does mean hot pepper in Spanish" (chilli is a nahua word, spelled in Spanish "chile"); "The Quichua language was spoken by Indians in western Guatemala..." (actually, the Quiché language, while Quechua - and not Quichua - is the language spoken in the Andean region); "New York appears as Nueva York on a Brazilian world map" (this is the Spanish name for NY, not the Portuguese Nova York). This book is not more than a shameless attempt to make money.

Derek Nelson's book Off the Map is the historical equivalent of a bathroom book. This is not said to be derogatory. In many ways, that is the charm of the book. It is light, easy to read, and filled with many, many facts. There are too many facts coming at the reader to remember them all or to learn them. Instead, the reader will come away with the general knowledge of how important place-names are to a culture and how other cultures will view a place and give it a name of their own. Naming a place to some extent is a control issue and the struggle for control is an ever-changing idea. But even these ideas are too heavy to be sustained in this light book. This book is meant to read quickly and enjoyed throughout. It is cotton candy, sweet to taste but light on substance with a carnival happening just on the outskirts of the reader's eye.

While this is not a book with detailed account of included facts it surely deserves appreciation for its curiosity-satisfaction factor and rarity of its kind.

The book jumps from subject to subject helping to present more facts which seems to be the objective of its author.

It boils with facts and information that one could not find easily elsewhere and this is the joy in it. I enjoyed it and strongly recommend to others.

I took a wonderful journey across the modern spectrum of geography with the author's work. I'm sorry a previous reader couldn't enjoy the same trip. This book takes geography out of the realm of academia and puts into the grasp of more readers. Having received an advanced degree in a related area, I know how what may have started as a small idea surely became an all-encompassing labor of love for the author. I appreciated his research and personally thought the editing kept the book on target. Give this one a read if you have the slightest bit of curiosity about how geography just isn't about states and cities, it ties the world together. Imagine my surprise when I found the book I had picked up on a whim was written by a Tidewater neighbor.

Interesting facts throughout, however, the book jumps all over the map (so to speak) and back and forth through history. It was difficult to follow the train of thought sometimes. He also puts forth an idea of pictures instead of place names about half way through the book, then proceeds to talk about it sparingly in the chapter. Interesting facts, but not well organized.

I found "Off the Map" to be a breath of fresh air in a discipline that has fallen from grace of late. Mr. Nelson's true love for history and the human frailty behind it is evident throughout the work. I highly recommend this book for the casual reader as well as the academic. A delight!

What is this? To call the Italian navigator Giovanni Cabotto (John Cabot, for English speakers) an "English explorer"? To seriously propose that the name of the Republic of Chile is somehow related to a Native Mexican word for "pepper"? To confuse the Quechuan language of the Andes with the Quiché peoples of Guatemala? To actually wonder whether the name of the Indonesian island of Java is somehow related to coffee? Laughable assertions such as these are found throughout "Off the Map". This book demerits its purpose, which should be to promote knowledge.

I wondered when I read this book just how accurate it was. It is a huge area of information to cover and the author while writing well does seem to have made some annoying errors. The other reviews cover many of them it seems (a lot I didn't know in fact) The one I picked up is that, when naming the Apollo 13 captain, Nelson called him James Loving (his name is, in fact, James Lovell). Its kind of really basic mistakes like that which bother me. It shouldn't be that hard to get an editor who can pick up on the slip-ups an author makes.

Although Nelson has divided his book up into 11 chapters they do tend to overlap a lot in subject area and matter. It is a fun easy read, one of those books with lots of little snippets of information which makes it easy to pick up at virtually any stage. However in the end I think a book needs to be both fun and accurate.

I borrowed this book from the library yesterday. I thought it would be a good start for learning about place-names, a subject I had become interested in through my reading of whaling history in Spitsbergen (a place which has a long history of renaming, misplacing, and misspelling place-names). I, unfortunately, did not look through the book before I borrowed it, seeing as how it was the only one of its kind on the shelf. It has no notes, and only cites no more than fifty sources, most (if not all) of which appear to be secondary sources. Both were signs I was about to read an unreliable book. I thought it might as well be a start, seeing as how the first book I read on whaling history, Men & Whales by Richard Ellis, I later found to be chalk full of mistakes. I guess it comes with the territory.

I have a very limited knowledge of history outside the early modern era (in particular the first half of the seventeenth century), with my focus being on whaling in Spitsbergen, as mentioned above. So any major mistakes made about modern history I wouldn't have noticed, but halfway through the book I had noticed several, and upon seeing the reviews here I realized I had stumbled upon another Men & Whales. Two mistakes in particular nearly turned me into a vegetable (I tend to get terribly distraught when I see really stupid mistakes on subject matter I know a lot about).

The first, on page 81, states: "The Dutch navigator Willem Barents rediscovered the real Greenland in 1596, and British explorers Martin Frobisher and John Davis visited in the late sixteenth century." First off, how could Barentsz (the proper spelling) have "rediscovered" Greenland if Frobisher's and Davis's voyages had preceded his? And second, he didn't rediscover Greenland! He discovered Spitsbergen, an Arctic island to the east of Greenland, now part of Norway. Only a complete idiot could make such a mistake. The second, on page 109, albeit an easier mistake to make, almost made me put the book down for good: "When the Dutch took control of Spitsbergen (in the Arctic Ocean north of Norway) in the 1640s, they established a town called Smeerenburg (Blubberville) for salting fish and rendering blubber." WHAT?! Smeerenburg was in decline in the 1640s, having been established in 1619 by Danish and Dutch whalers. Anyone with the least bit of knowledge of whaling history would cringe and want to start fighting some dumbass bro once they read that. 1640s?! I'm having trouble processing such an asinine mistake. Smeerenburg was used solely for whaling, not "salting fish"! Salting fish?! What the hell is talking about?! What fish?! Fish?!!

Besides all the errors and writing that haphazardly jumps back and forth between subjects, I did enjoy the book, and only because I found the subject matter to be fascinating. For that I gave it two stars, instead of just one. I finished it in only one morning of reading, amazing for me, considering I usually become distracted or bored with most books that aren't solely on whaling. That being said, seriously don't waste your time with this book. Who knows how many other moronic mistakes the author made I don't care to know about (because just about all history outside the early modern era is really boring to me).