Map Men Audiobooks

This Way Up: maps, borders and the odd business of drawing the world

1 audiobook reviewed

★ 4.6/5 average

646 listener ratings

Who is Map Men?

A byline like Map Men announces its subject before a word of the book is heard. Cartography is the promise, and This Way Up plays on the one convention every map depends on and almost nobody thinks about, which is simply deciding which end goes at the top.

Our shelving supports that reading. The work sits across history and heritage, politics and society, science and engineering, and travel, an unusual spread for any single work and a very natural one for a book about maps. Drawing the world is a technical problem, a political act and a travel story all at once.

Everything else about the name behind it is left exactly where it stands. The work is the introduction.

Map Men in audiobooks

Eight hours and change gives a subject like this proper room without turning it into a reference volume. The listener response is the most telling thing on the record: a high mark supported by a crowd in the hundreds, the sort of base that survives a sour review or two without wobbling.

No narrator is credited in our listing, so if the reading matters to you, and with popular non-fiction it usually does, play the sample first. Otherwise the route in is straightforward, and an inviting one for anyone who has ever stared at a tube map or a border and wondered who decided that.

Scroll on for what we currently hold.