Book Review: Winchester, S. (2009). The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology. United States: HarperCollins

Abstract

Writers have their own storytelling techniques to attract their readers, and Simon Winchester is no exception. The author is known for a unique interest in anecdotes dealing with the transmission of knowledge from one source to another and finally to the human mind, with its own inquisitive spirit. The Map That Changed the World is a perfect example of an author’s unerring ability to combine a character’s drama with historical facts and encyclopedic information. The book is a tribute to the achievement of a self-taught and extremely practical blacksmith’s son, named William Smith, and his famous map that paved the way for the science of geology to become part of the acknowledged scientific culture of the 18th century and beyond. Organized in 17 chapters, with a prologue and an epilogue, the whole project also contains valuable data that would enchant the readers’ eyes with geological terms to facilitate the journey of a pleasant awakening to the beauties of fossils, layers of rock, and excavations. And this all started in 1793, when the eight-year-old boy William Smith made a startling discovery: circular pound-stones used by dairymaids (like his aunt) to operate their butter-scales.