Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Poorly written, can live without it!, March 26, 2002
Map collectors have had, in the past, a problem finding books that contain useful information to help with collecting. At first impression, Potter's book looks like it should be a very useful and important asset. Alas, not true. Although this book is visually attractive, it is poorly written. There is some information here, but Potter's style is ponderous and soporific, making reading it difficult and irritating. Overall, the writing seems to be sloppy and hastily done and this appears to be a book written (quickly) to order. Fifty-word sentences are common! I actually counted 97 words in a single sentence! That particular sentence contained some half-dozen, mostly unrelated, thoughts. Where was the editor? (Was there an editor?) There are also some conceptual errors. One example is when Potter writes about projections and explains that it is difficult to represent a circular object on a plane piece of paper, not knowing that a circle is a plane figure. It is surprising that these errors and difficult writing were not corrected in the second edition. In recent years, collecting maps has grown in popularity as a hobby (I've been at it for about 6 years). This book does little for the majority of new collectors. Potter has chosen to illustrate and to discuss (not with much relevant insight, I might add) only the most "important" and expensive maps, many of which are museum items, and the book is very out of touch with today's American (and many European) map collectors. A London map dealer's stilted (and often erroneous) prose does not help us with our hobby. Many collectors today focus on other types of maps, building very nice, and important, collections around themes other than just scarcity or museum quality. Unfortunately this book is of little help to the majority of these modern-day collectors, and map collectors who buy museum pieces don't need a book like this! The book might be nice as a collection of pictures, but otherwise has relatively little value, and I don't think I shall be consulting my copy very much. The previous review recommended Moreland and Bannister's "Antique Maps", and I concur. This is far better than the Potter volume. I also suggest getting Manasek's "Collecting Old Maps" whch is an important new book quite unlike most other map books. These latter two books will be of inestimable help to most collectors and make Potter's book an unecessary encumbrance.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
NOT a new edition! A dated book, January 30, 2002
Geoff from NYC. "Collecting Antique Maps" by Jonathan Potter is an attractive book. It is replete with colour illustrations and virtually every page is illustrated, giving it a nice overall appearance. The book is a very general "bird's-eye" view of maps and can provide the beginner with some useful information. I own the first edition, essentially the same book, that was published as "Country Life Book of Antique Maps". I bought the present book on the basis of it being advertised as a revised, second edition, and I looked forward to a new version, expecting weaknesses to be corrected. The original edition, published in 1988, had a number of weaknesses, and I was interested to learn of this "revison". Unfortunately Potter's "revision" consisted ONLY of TEN added pages to the original text, which was otherwise left unchanged! These added pages seem to be hastily written and offer very little useful information. The 10 added pages include a bibliography that is both cursory and poorly organized and is of little use to those of us who want to read more about map collecting. Don't get me wrong - the book is OK, but still very anglocentric and now, more than ever, dated. It is clearly in the lineage of RV Tooley's "Maps and Map Makers" and represents that style and generation of map collecting, and maps from the English dealers' perspective. The images are very well reproduced and very attractive, but they touch mostly on the "highlights" and do not help the collector, like me, who cannot afford to collect ten thousand dollar maps. The picture captions remain as awkward as they were in the original printing. The book attempts to cover too much for its size and therefore is annoyingly superficial throughout. The illustrations are nice, but the text is now very dated and it remains overly superficial. I like the book, (as I liked the original editon) but I don't need two copies of the same work and feel somewhat cheated that Potter has simply changed the title, added ten pages of pap and calls it a revised second edition. I think this just a bit dishonest. Except for the colour illustrations, it cannot compete with Moreland and Bannister's book, which is far superior. If you have the Moreland and Bannister volume you won't need this. If you have "Country Life Book Of Antique Maps" don't bother getting this non-revision. I have downrated it by one star because it is the same old book being peddled under a new title.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Somewhat disappointing, March 26, 2002
Map collectors have had, in the past, a problem finding books that contain useful information to help with collecting. At first impression, Potter's book looks like it should be a very useful and important asset. Alas, not true. Although this book is visually attractive, it is poorly written. There is some information here, but Potter's style is ponderous and soporific, making reading it difficult and irritating. Overall, the writing seems to be sloppy and hastily done and this appears to be a book written (quickly) to order. Fifty-word sentences are common! I actually counted 97 words in a single sentence! That particular sentence contained some half-dozen, mostly unrelated, thoughts. Where was the editor? (Was there an editor?) There are also some conceptual errors. One example is when Potter writes about projections and explains that it is difficult to represent a circular object on a plane piece of paper, not knowing that a circle is a plane figure. It is surprising that these errors and difficult writing were not corrected in the second edition. In recent years, collecting maps has grown in popularity as a hobby (I've been at it for about 6 years). This book does little for the majority of new collectors. Potter has chosen to illustrate and to discuss (not with much relevant insight, I might add) only the most "important" and expensive maps, many of which are museum items, and the book is very out of touch with today's American (and many European) map collectors. A London map dealer's stilted (and often erroneous) prose does not help us with our hobby. Many collectors today focus on other types of maps, building very nice, and important, collections around themes other than just scarcity or museum quality. Unfortunately this book is of little help to the majority of these modern-day collectors, and map collectors who buy museum pieces don't need a book like this! The book might be nice as a collection of pictures, but otherwise has relatively little value, and I don't think I shall be consulting my copy very much. The previous review recommended Moreland and Bannister's book "Antique Maps", and I concur. This is far better than the Potter volume. I also suggest getting Manasek's "Collecting Old Maps" whch is an important new book quite unlike most other map books. These latter two books will be of inestimable help to most collectors and make Potter's book an unecessary encumbrance.
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