![]() ![]() ![]() It describes the origin ofgeologic maps and stratigraphy, and charts the life of William “Strata”Smith-the lone genius who invented them both and changed the world, asWinchester tells it. Simon Winchester’s book The Map that Changed the World: William Smithand the Birth of Modern Geology is yet another example of what someone oncecalled the “Small-Things-Mean-A-Lot” genre. Think of them as the scientific equivalent of VH1’s Behindthe Music. Thetitles say it all: Amir Acsel’s The Riddle of the Compass: the Inventionthat Changed the World Lucy Jago’s The Northern Lights: The True Storyof the Man Who Unlocked the Secrets of the Aurora Borealis Cherry Lewis’s The Dating Game: One Man's Search for the Age of the Earth Simon Garfield’s Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed theWorld and so on. Most of thesebooks center on a biography of a lone, forgotten genius who first made the greatdiscovery that changed the world, sometimes in the teeth of huge obstacles. William Smith and the Birth of Modern GeologyĮver since the runaway success of Dava Sobel’s 1995 book Longitude: TheTrue Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of HisTime, there has been a proliferation of popular books that focus on thehistory of a single invention or discovery, generally one so widespread that itnever would occur to most people even to ask how it came to be. ![]()
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