Customer Reviews

Whatever Happened to Tanganyika?: The Place Names that History Left Behind

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

 

 

I picked this up for the catchy title (Tanganyika? a blast from the past!) and couldn't put it down.
Part of my job involves getting place names correct, thought by some (not me) to be a tedious chore, so I couldn't help but be drawn in to Harry's tongue-in-cheek approach to geography. Moldova vs Moldavia? he knows. When and why did Burma become Myanmar and did anyone ask the inhabitants? The place names of my youth are all explained here, as well as their demise in the intervening years for political correctness. Humor is threaded throughout the book, as with his explanation of the history of 'The Islands of St Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins', Christopher Columbus' name for the present-day Virgin Islands. Who knew?
I was utterly charmed by his entry on the country of San Serriffe, later revealed to be an April Fool's Day joke started and perpetuated by the Guardian (UK). Campbell's entry is just as funny and a lot more compact than the series of articles that make it a running joke in the UK.

Anyway, love the book, got a great laugh out of it. I wonder what's next?

(tagged with Humor, Geography - when was the last time you put those two together?)

One thing, Mr Campbell - while the illustrations are cute, maps would have been helpful. Kiribati isn't on my list of familiar places.

For those of us interested in Geographica- Geographic Trivia- this book is a find and a must buy.

Chock full of interesting and informative tidbits and factoids about the forgotten (or fondly remembered) places on the Map that are no longer there (or at least are no longer named that way).

The footnotes are particularly amusing, I found myself chuckling or smiling at least once a page.

Why only 4 stars then? It's rather short, only 140 pages. And, the lack of maps is a problem, the book is only illustrated with drawings of stamps.

After reading many travel books by the likes of Michael Palin, Paul Theroux, and Mark Twain, I was not ready for the pedestrian prose of this cute red book with the clever title.
After reading awhile I might have forgiven the writing (Campbell is, I guess, an historian, not a travel writer). But the editing left many grammatical errors in place (not mere Britishisms), and there was at least one (for me) easily noticed factual error (Rutland VT vs Rutland MA) that reduced my confidence in the rest of the information in the book.

I am afraid that this this book is nothing but pure etymology, and I am even more afraid the author is fully aware of this. Despite that, he ploughs on through the entire work, toying with our memories and fascinations over questions and confusions such as what ever happened to Burma?

I regret that those of us who grew up when most of the world was coloured pink for the Empire will be confounded by learning that the names granted by our illustrious forebears for the highest and purest ideals were changed - for example from Bombay to Mumbai or some such - purely on nationalist whim! And exactly what did happen to Tanganyika ... or Ceylon for that matter?

Harrumph!