It has a beautiful introduction full of thoughts on travel and what it is that draws people to remote places. I would give this book 10 stars if I could. Highly recommended for those of us who adore all maps. It's a book to treasure and have a physical copy of, especially in hardback. We get to enjoy stories of penguin burning, whale hunting, Robinson Crusoes, idyllic atolls, atomic bombs, murder, infanticide and cannibalism.Ī book that proves to be both physically and descriptively beautiful and yet captures what makes carto-nerds tick is a rare thing. But below this Judith gives a little story for each. Each island has two pages dedicated to it, the right hand page a map at the 1:125000 scale and the left hand page has a gloabal locator, the nearest other land and a timeline of discovery and events.

After a lengthy but fascinating introduction full of insight we are treated to a multitude of island each arranged by ocean. Judith has produced a blindingly brilliant and different atlas that combines what we carto-nerds love in maps with stories from history. When she was in her teenage years the Berlin wall fell, Germany was reunited and Judith was faced with infinite possibilities to travel to these strange lands that had filled her imagination.

Judith still managed to get her small hands on a children's world atlas and went on imaginary trips like the rest of us.

So her primary school years were filled with communist propoganda and maps on walls that showed a world that was unavailable to most East German citizens. Judith grew up in East Germany during the late 80's and early 90's. While Judith Schalansky proves to be another of my fellow map nerds along with Simon Garfield and Ken Jennings, Judith's history has a unique slant on the usual type of nerdery. On a wonderfully warm and cloudless winter solstice day I took this volume on a picnic and was engrossed for a few hours with the beautiful maps and the equally beautiful stories that accompanied them.

Pocket atlas of remote islands