Clara’s Verdict
I did not expect to spend a Sunday afternoon genuinely moved by a book about wrong maps. But that is the territory This Way Up navigates, and the Map Men, Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones, the YouTube duo who have built a devoted following around their deeply nerdy cartographical enthusiasm, pull it off with a combination of rigorous research, consistent wit, and a willingness to go somewhere genuinely serious when the material demands it. This is a Sunday Times bestseller and a Waterstones Best Nature and Travel Writing pick for 2025, which is a strange classification for a book about cartographic errors but an accurate one: it is about exploration in the broadest sense, about how the maps we draw betray what we believe, fear, or hope to be true about the world and about ourselves.
The audiobook runs to eight hours and eighteen minutes. The Map Men narrate it themselves, in their own voices, and that is essential information, because this is a book whose personality is completely inseparable from the people who wrote it. If you are familiar with their YouTube videos, you will hear exactly the voices you expect, and that continuity is one of the edition’s chief pleasures.
About the Audiobook
The premise is deceptively simple: a curated collection of wrong maps, ranging from centuries old to contemporary, each with a chapter explaining what went wrong and why it matters. World maps, colonial maps, corporate maps, Soviet maps, pioneer maps, news maps, and a particularly memorable set of maps whose intended use was hijacked for a French surrealist political movement in the 1950s. But the deeper project is considerably more ambitious than a cabinet of cartographic curiosities. The Map Men use these maps to trace how power, error, ideology, and imagination have shaped our shared understanding of the world. Colonial maps that erased existing cultures and place names. Soviet maps that deliberately distorted geography for strategic reasons. Corporate maps that bend coastlines to serve commercial interests. Each chapter is self-contained but the cumulative effect is substantial: by the end of the book, you have a genuinely changed relationship with the authority we casually grant to maps, and with the stories about the world that maps tell by inclusion and by silence.
The Narration
Self-narrated is the only appropriate word here, and it is exactly right. One reviewer notes that the audiobook perfectly matches the voice of their YouTube videos, with the same quirky humour and great storytelling, and that the experience feels different on every chapter. That last observation is important: each chapter of This Way Up has its own tone, from slapstick absurdity to genuine historical horror, and the Map Men modulate between those registers naturally and without apparent effort. A professional narrator would have produced a more technically polished recording, and that person would also have produced something fundamentally different and less interesting. One reviewer notes a practical point of comparison: the maps included as attachments in the audio edition are in colour and of higher quality than the greyscale maps in the physical hardcover, which is an unusual reversal of normal supplementary material expectations.
What Readers Say
With 454 ratings and a 4.6-star average, This Way Up has genuine momentum and a very warm reader response. Listeners use the words brilliant, fascinating, and hilarious in quick succession. One reviewer describes the book as making them laugh and cry, which is a serious claim for a book about maps but not an implausible one given some of the historical material involved, particularly around colonial erasure and deliberate Soviet disinformation. The strongest praise comes consistently for the book’s ability to mix entertainment with depth and to function as both comedy and social history simultaneously. Richard Osman’s cover endorsement, educational, smart, and funny, is accurate. Charlie Brooker’s is also accurate: superb.
One aspect of the book that I found particularly striking and that reviewers mention is the way the Map Men handle maps that caused genuine harm: colonial maps that erased indigenous place names and borders, maps that were used to justify conquest and territorial seizure. These sections are handled with seriousness and care rather than with the comedy that marks other chapters, and the tonal shift is managed well. It is a reminder that cartography is never neutral and never was, and that the authority we extend to a map because it looks authoritative is something worth interrogating. That is a lesson that goes well beyond an interest in maps.
Who Should Listen?
Anyone who has watched and enjoyed the Map Men’s YouTube videos will find this essential. More broadly, this is a book for curious generalists who enjoy popular history told through unexpected and underexplored angles, and for anyone with an interest in how visual representations of the world carry ideological and political freight that we rarely interrogate. It works as light entertainment and as something considerably more serious depending on how much you want to sit with it. The dual narrator format means it occasionally sounds like a lively conversation between the two authors, which adds warmth without sacrificing the clarity needed to follow the historical detail.
