Rating: 
Summary: Divided Earth¿s Layers and Beliefs
Review: When William Smith was born and even well in to his journey of discovery, the age of the Earth was well documented. A person had only to turn to a Bible to find the exact year, day and hour that "time began". That date today would fall within the area of Creationism, a topic that is still held to be true by many who do not believe the Bible is open to interpretation, and believe that the Theory of Evolution is little more than a fiction. If your beliefs fall in to the former group this book will be of no interest to you, and lest you think Creationists are an insignificant group, the author quotes one study that shows up to 100 million people in The USA are inclined to the Bible's explanation of the Earth's beginnings as opposed to those of science."The Map That Changed The World", is a great addition to books on a variety of scientific disciplines that bring a subject to a wide range of readers and not just those devoted to the topic. The author Simon Winchester describes this book as a hors d'oeuvre in comparison to the work of Professor Torrens who is writing what Mr. Winchester believes will be the definitive book on William Smith and his life's work. Far from using Professor's Torrens' work, the Professor was an active participant and advisor for Mr. Winchester in producing this much smaller volume for those of us that are not students of geology. William Smith paved the way for men like Darwin and Wallace who would build upon what Smith had created, and then greatly expand the concept that there have been great changes to living creatures over nearly unimaginable periods of time, and that by knowing where a fossil could and would be found could begin to create a History of our planet that was exponentially older than believed at the time. While this book is firmly on the side of evolution the author does explain the theories that accounted for fossils and their apparently random location throughout the Earth's crust. There locale was compared to the stars, if God could randomly place stars wherever He chose why could He not also place these remnants of long dead animals where He chose as well? For those who take the Bible literally such an explanation is not a great leap. This was a time of "Phlogiston, Ether", a time when it was held by many that mountains were as organic as trees and grew upward and outward just as their branched counterparts. This book did slow down a bit when the author retraced some of William's Smith's travels. The writer is clearly enamored of William Smith and geology for his writing, at times, appears to cross the line from descriptive to a celebratory type of prose. William Smith had a wild ride of a life, and the end is comparable to what Hollywood would have conjured to make the audience feel good. It may not read as well and be accepted in a book as it would in a theater, but this is a fine piece of writing on a man that most know little or nothing about. And for bringing William Smith to us we can thank Simon Winchester.
Rating: 
Summary: Agree w/ tediously repetitive hyperbole by previous reviewer
Review: Hearing of the release of this book, I was looking forward to reading it. After stuggling through it, I thought I had missed something until I read other reviewers. Didn't someone edit this book? Many of the reviewers are correct; it is not a well- written book on an interesting man. In fact, if you read the acknowledgments (page 317), it appears that the author has ripped off the good stuff from Professor Hugh Torrens who was writing on the same subject. Let's encouage the Professor to finish his works. Maybe that will give William Smith's memory a better turn.
Rating:
Summary: Tediously repetitive hyperbole
Review: Reading between the lines, I would guess that the author was unable to unearth enough material to really make William Smith come to life, in a narrative sense. So instead he substituted continual breathless assertion of the brilliance and audacity of Smith's accomplishment as though leading a cheering section, and repeatedly related those aspects of Smith's history which he *did* possess, in slightly different format, over and over again throughout the book. In other words, what could've been a fascinating magazine article was instead inflated into an exceedingly dull book, with a muddled timeline and so much hyperbole that I have come to dislike William Smith. Pass this one by.
Rating: 
Summary: Our Hero ... William "Strata" Smith
Review: We geologists sit out here and take for granted (some might say "for granite")our ability to 3-dimensionally visualize the earth beneath our feet. This book has to be a "must buy" for every practicing geologist, for without William "Strata" Smith's effort in producing the first really scientific geologic map, the world and humanity could very well be many years behind in the progress that we see today. The predictive geologic skills developed by Smith were developed under extreme conditions of hardship. And, like so many men of progress, his contribution was not fully recognized in his lifetime. If I had the money, I would buy ten copies to give to my favorite geologist friends. Why don't you consider a gift to your local geologist ... they would really love this book!
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing review of an undeservedly overlooked story
Review: The premise of the book is sound. Let's tel la story of a man who is lagely forgotten, again, but whose contributions will linger forever. The book begins well, but the style of narration gets in the way of the story. The book tries to follow threads chronologically AND logically at the same time. That means that we read about the fact of Smith's imprisoment at least 10 times, his family troubles are repeated in various amounts of detail another 10, and so on. the view of science prior to industrial revolution is presented in a rediculously simplified manner, with some facts flat wrong, and others drawn up by their ears to fit into the structure the author is trying to erect.
In the end, the manuscript becomes muddled with repetitions, congratulatory back-slapping, and unimpressive writing. Unless one is desperate to read more about William Smith, I would not recommend this book as either a snapshot of England in 18th century, a survey of early geology, or overview of scientific and societal causes that led Smith on in his quest.
William Smith and his map deserve a better book that would focus on just them, place them in proper context, and dispense with rediculously biased review of the history of science.
Rating:
Summary: The Map that Changed the World
Review: The Map that Changed the World: William Smith the Birth of Modern Geology written by Simon Winchester is an engaging narrative about the discovery of the science we call geology. The author takes us on a journey with William Smith an orphan and later a canal digger as he notices sometine of a pattern in the rock formations, tracing the layers of rocks as they dipped and rose and fell again all throughout England. Later he would travel the whole of England to map outcrops and what type of geology was under foot. This book came with a beautiful map of the geology of England a map quite a bit smaller than eight by six foot map that was published in 1815. All in all, this was an educational as well as entertaining read about the earth and what people take for granted. What do we build our homes upon, what are our bridges anchored in, where do you find coal or other minerals. This is a story of a man and his life problems, a man deeply overlooked until a sympathetic nobleman brought him back into contact with the Geological Society of London. This is the story of William Smith a man of dedication.
Rating:
Summary: the author gets in the way of the story
Review: There are two problems with this book, a pop history about William Smith and the birth of the science of geology. First, Mr. Winchester writes in a silly style that's simultaneously conversational and overwrought; while at times he can be amusing, most of the book is kind of a slog to get to the point. The problem is compounded by Winchester's approach to historical details: in true pop history fashion he throws in as many as he can in order to set the scene, but I was never convinced that he was really engaging in the history. Rather, most of the time he comes at it like someone writing bad historical fiction, tossing off useless tidbits about the sudden popularity of umbrellas or the beauty of the Bath landscape. The few serious historical points he does discuss are ruined by their complete irrelevance to the text--'if we wanted to know about that,' readers all over the world should be saying, 'we'd be reading about it instead of about William Smith!' The absence of any footnotes at all only makes things worse. The second problem, less vital to the enjoyability of the book but a bigger issue overall, is that Winchester suggests a ridiculously simplified and distorted view of the history of science. Perhaps poisoned his youthful experiences at a Catholic school (which somehow come into the William Smith narrative, otherwise I wouldn't mention them), he imagines that people's blind obedience to religion meant that they just didn't think at all before 1750, and after that did it only poorly until the industrial revolution was in full swing. Of course, his theory that beliefs about such weighty matters as humankind's beginnings were unburdened by the complications of too much thought' is ridiculously dismissive of earlier generations of philosophers and scientists from Aristotle to Galileo, and it ignores the fact there were people in every period of history who did their best to understand the world around them based on the tools they had available. This leads Winchester to dramatically overstate Smith's contributions to the intellectual history of the world: yes, his ideas about stratification were a radical departure and a stroke of genius, but could he have come up with them if he hadn't lived in an age of large-scale coal-mines and canals? Why deify him and derogate all his predecessors? It also seems silly to castigate our fore-bearers for not thinking: cause how many people today actually think about, oh, dark matter and the shape of the universe, to say nothing of more relevant things like evolution or climate change? It seems to me that today--as always--most people just accept what they're told, without fully understanding it or working it out for themselves. And there's nothing wrong with that, now or then. Overall, I'd only recommend this book to people who are desperately interested in William Smith: it fails in any larger sense, and I imagine there must be better books out there for folks who are interested in either the history of geology or early 19th English history in general. And Winchester's book isn't even that good as biography, nor is it particularly fun to read. That said, it does have the occasional, and the subject is quite an interesting one, so perhaps if you're stuck in an airport over the Christmas holidays you might want to give this book a try. Otherwise, though, I wouldn't recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Just read the dust jacket
Review: This is a poorly written, pedantic book about an interesting subject. But it's not interesting in this writer's hands. You can save yourself the frustration of reading his writing by just reading the dust jacket - it sums it up quite nicely. Take a look at the "front flap" and "back flap" links on this site, and save yourself the money. Or borrow it from the library, if the more positive reviews pique your curiosity. Definitely not worth buying.
Rating:
Summary: A shade less, please....
Review: Simon Winchester's "The Map That Changed the World" is 20% too long, with some convoluted and repetitive narrative stretches (and personal reminiscences tossed in for good measure.) At its best - and there is so much that is so good - , this nonfiction rendering reads like a good mystery with all the relevant components: rivalries, jealousies, fortunes, and the quintessentially British classism complicating all things. However, the overarching mystery - just what lies beneath the visible expanses of earth - is what William Smith unearthed (literally,) obsessed over, analyzed, and finally solved during his unheralded half-century at the task of establishing the validity and veracity of geology. Happily, he finally did gain the esteem and respect that his humble birth had for decades denied him. My other complaint (beyond the too long by 1/5 noted above) is that too little is included to pinpoint precisely where Mr. Smith dug up precisely what, thus enabling him to devise his pre-Darwinian theories of the earth's age and composition. More illustrations of fossils and, definitely, more maps are needed here. Fortunately, I was able to find a downloadable rendition of Mr. Smith's elegantly detailed and hand-painted document online. Each of its fifteen 8 ½ x 11 pages could have filled a page of the text quite nicely, with a Playboy-esque centerfold of the entire project pulling it all together. It is a remarkable document. And again, as in "The Professor and the Madman," Winchester has captured the peculiar English trait which has bestowed so much knowledge to the world: the obsessed eccentric driven to eventual greatness and landmark discoveries.
Rating:
Summary: TEDIOUS!!!!!
Review: This is one of the most irritating books I have read in a long time. It was repetitive in the extreme - to the point where I skimmed the last 100 pages just to finish the damned thing. Winchester is a writer who is in love with his own cleverness - using excrutiating metaphors (the buttered parsnips was particularly vile), to pad out his narrative. The story is essentially a good one, but not one which lends itself (particularly in Winchester's hands) to a 300 page work. He could easily have trimmed 100 pages (just leave out the constant repetition on 'what was about to happen', or the endless commnents on the map). The work of William Smith does not need to be sold in such a way - it would have been easier to explain it and let it speak for itself. The significance of Smith's work is as relevant now as ever (particularly in a USA where way-too-many people believe in divine creation), and simply detailing the science of stratigraphy, and Smith's awareness of what he was doing, would have been a better approach. A further point is the sloppiness of some of the editing - where we are told facts which are then repeated some pages later, or where names are cited (e.g. the first president of the Geological Society) in two different ways. Such mistakes would not have escaped a decent and competent proofreader. All in all I cannot recommend this book. The two stars are for William Smith. I await eagerly a decently written biography of this man. This book, unfortunately, is most definitely NOT it!
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