topics: |  cartography | science | history | picture-book

Book made from a Television series, well-illustrated as expected.  Covers
Chinese mapmaking and the impetus of the Mongol empire.  A good bit of the
drama comes with the Great Trigonometryc survey of India (for more on
this, see John Keay's The great arc, 2000).

George Everest: a cantankerous perfectionist who once court-martialed a
subordinate for allowing his horse to whinny outside his tent.

Review: John Noble Wilford

from http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE0DF1E38F932A05750C0A967958260&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/Subjects/M/Maps Television; Cartographers on the Map

The epic story of mapping the world is told in a six-part series, "The
Shape of the World," ... produced by Granada Television in Britain in
conjunction with WNET in New York.

From the elegant silk maps of the ancient Chinese and the inspired Greeks who
made surprisingly accurate measurements of Earth's circumference, the series
traces the evolution of cartography. It details the unscientific medieval
practices of depicting myth and dogma, including the assumed location of
Paradise, as well as the more realistic but secretive charting of the seas
that set the scene for the Age of Discovery. The series ends with the modern
technologies of aerial photogrammetry, radar and sonar probing of invisible
topography. But it is the Great Trigonometric Survey of India, featured in
the fourth program, that best captures the spirit and ambition, the ingenuity
and perseverance of those who undertook to embrace the world through maps.

Simon Berthon, editor of the series, acknowledges that the Indian survey was
the inspiration for the "The Shape of the World." He happened to hear about
the survey from Gen. Pete Thuillier, who lives near him in England. The
general is the great-grandson of Henry Landor Thuillier, an officer of the
Survey of India, who on Aug. 6, 1856, was the first to announce the discovery
that Mount Everest is the highest peak in the world.

The measurement of Everest was a culminating achievement in one of the great
adventures in mapmaking. Blending archival photographs and maps with
re-creations of survey parties, the program revives the experience. There is
Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, who initiated the
project. Also accounted for are two of the chief surveyors, the mild-mannered
William Lambton and George Everest, a cantankerous perfectionist who once
court-martialed a subordinate for allowing his horse to whinny outside his
tent. And there is General Thuillier himself, the very image of a bygone age
of imperial adventure.