Mercator: The Man who Mapped the Planet

by Nicholas Crane

Gerard Mercator (1512-1594) was born at the dawn of the Age of Discovery, when the world was beginning to be discovered and carved up by navigators, geographers and cartographers. Mercator was the greatest and most ingenious cartographer of them all: it was he who coined the word 'atlas' and solved the riddle of converting the three-dimensional globe into a two-dimensional map while retaining true compass bearings. It is Mercator's Projection that NASA are using today to map Mars. How did Mercator reconcile his religious beliefs with a science that would make Christian maps obsolete? How did a man whose imagination roamed continents endure imprisonment by the Inquisition? Crane brings this great man vividly to life, underlying it with colour illustrations of the maps themselves: maps that brought to a rapt public wonders as remarkable as today's cyber-world.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Science, Maps, Geography, Cartography

561 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Distilled from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas... accessed 07-Aug-2012:

Nicholas Crane (born 6 May 1954) is an English geographer, explorer, writer and broadcaster was born in Hastings, East Sussex, but grew up in Norfolk. He attended Wymondham College from 1967 until 1972, then Cambridgeshire College of Arts & Technology (CCAT), a forerunner to Anglia Ruskin University, where he studied Geography.

In his youth he went camping and hiking with his father and explored Norfolk by bicycle which gave him his enthusiasm for exploration. In 1986 he located the pole of inaccessibility for the Eurasia landmass travelling with his cousin Richard; their journey being the subject of the book “Journey to the Centre of the Earth.”

He married Annabel Huxley in 1991. They live in Chalk Farm in north-west London and have three children.

In 1992/3 he embarked on an 18-month solo journey, walking 10,000 kilometres from Cape Finisterre to Istanbul. He recounted that expedition in his book “Clear Waters Rising: A Mountain Walk Across Europe” which won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award in 1997. He made a television self-documentary of the journey in “High Trails to Istanbul” (1994).

Together with Richard Crane he was awarded the 1992 Mungo Park Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society for his journeys in Tibet, China, Afghanistan and Africa.

His 2000 book “Two Degrees West” described his walk across Great Britain in which he followed the eponymous meridian as closely as possible. More recently he published a biography of Gerard Mercator, the great Flemish cartographer.

In November 2007 he debated the future of the English countryside with Richard Girling, Sue Clifford, Richard Mabey and Bill Bryson as part of CPRE's annual Volunteers Conference

Since 2004 he has written and presented four notable television series for BBC Two: Coast, Great British Journeys, Map Man and Town.

Reviews

[Daren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, this book is amazingly detailed and incredibly thorough, but it is also a bit overwhelming, and hard to read. If anything it contains too much information - making it (for me anyway) too hard to pull together into cohesive knowledge.
It is not necessarily written in an overly academic way - passages of it in isolation are quite readable, but the sheer weight of events and actions, descriptions of maps & globes is just, well, overwhelming. The almost 50 pages of notes referenced from the text do seem to suggest an academic work, but research is obviously something the author excelled at!

As other reviewers have said (quite correctly in my case) that the book is of too much detail to maintain the interest of a general reader. This was the case for me although I found certain parts excellent, overall it was hard to stick with. I read another two and a half books while unmotivated to pick this up off the table.

So although the details of his mapping and globe techniques made sense as I read along, it was all too much for any retained knowledge, although the Epilogue gives a nice summary in several pages.

It seems petty to give this less than 3 stars, but I didn't 'enjoy' reading it any more than that.

[Sportyrod · Rating 3 out of 5]

Who’s Mercator? The guy who took the image of Earth’s sphere/ellipsoid, distorted it mathematically, and produced atlases in the form of the rectangular spread we are used to seeing nowadays. There were similar mapping attempts before, and superceded versions after however it was Mercator’s (not his real name) work that revolutionised cartography.

Surprisingly, the biography was beautifully written. The imagery produced was phenomenal. Such descriptiveness. A simple thing like getting from A to B was so colourful. The high level description was also it’s downfall. I completed an, ‘around the world’ reading challenge, so I obviously love geography and maps. But I think an obsessive level of interest is required to fully appreciate this book. At first I was wowwed, but it wore off pretty quickly and became the case of, ‘get to the maps already’. I saw in other reviews that the sentiment was shared and that the best parts were near the end. So being the naughty, impatient boy I am, I skipped to the end and read chapters from end to start. I wanted my, ‘how to…’ fix first, and the appreciation after. And it really worked for me.

A brilliant piece of work, but for the wrong person. If you’re next level geography nerd, go for it.

[Ryan Marquardt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an immensely detailed biography. It's probably too detailed to be of much interest to a general reader. In fact, I'm not entirely sure if this book is all that readable outside of an academic setting. It appears to be painstakingly researched and provides a narrative of Gerardus Kremer's entire life.

It didn't really get into the details of cartography that much. Apparently Mercator's use of italics was almost as influential as his projection of the globe (which he may have developed when laying out the gores for one of his sought after globes). He also appears to be one of the first cartographers to have created a book of maps that depict the entire Earth, and was the first to call such a collection an Atlas.

The book is interesting as an historical portrait of like in the the Dutch and German lowlands around 1500. It is interesting to view Europe in a time when survival for common people could be decided by a bad harvest one year. Mercator's time is also interesting as a bridge between feudal times and the emergence of larger nations and the religious strife associated with the reformation. I wouldn't quite use the word hero, but Mercator sought to re-present through empirical data and did not appear to have a political or religious agenda. However, his maps and globes and their representation of what belonged to whom did make him an object of persecution by the Catholic Spaniards in the Netherlands. He moved to Protestant Germany after that experience to enjoy a humanist atmosphere more tolerant of learning and free thought.

I think he is to be admired for the obvious skill as a cartographer, his grand project to map the entire world in an Atlas based on the best available data, and his ability to negotiate the rough political and religious seas through his schooling and vocation. I especially admire that he labored alone for so much of his on a project of such a grand scale (the mapping of the Earth). That type of dedication and perseverance to a project that provides such a large benefit to humanity is amazing. The fact that he labored alone may have been due to his perfectionist tendencies, but still....

And one last point, people (including myself at one point) disparage the Mercator projection for its distortions, and the apparent agrandization of the northern hemisphere in relation to the equatorial regions. It distorts things...fair enough. However, the projection has its merits for being able to plot a straight line on a map and follow that map heading to a destination. Also, you can dislike the distortions on the map, but I think Mercator deserves his due for creating a very useful representation of a sphere onto a sheet of paper. Not everyone could afford a globe at that time, and wall maps using the Mercator projection could easily be purchased and made into a montage of the known earth. Finally, I think Mercator's interests were cartographic, and not geopolitical. The results of the continued and ubiquitous use of the projection can be argued against in our current time, but I think the creator of the projection is beyond reproach.

[^ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engrossing ... yet there is so much depth of content in this volume that I felt I needed fairly frequent breaks in order to assimilate the sheer weight of knowledge which Nicholas Crane packs into this book. It is quite unlike anything else of his I have read. This book is beautifully constructed, it is a a tale which needed to be told, and he has told it very well indeed.

Mr Crane clearly enjoyed researching his material, and that joy is infectious. However, I touchingly felt that I could almost begin to imagine how wonderful it must have felt to him to finish writing it, and to be reunited with his (ever understanding) wife and three children.

More please! (family permitting).

[Marc · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very classic biography, with a chronological overview of the live of Mercator. Very interesting because of the way he showed Mercator got to his famous projection-method, and also because Mercator clearly was religiously inspired.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is mainly focused on the details of Mercator's life (like his complete inability to answer letters on time, meet deadlines, or set realistic goals) which was interesting, but I would have preferred more explanation of the thing that made him important enough to write a book about.

[Leigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating and incredibly detailed biography of the man who gave us the Mercator projection – the method still used to reproduce the 3D world on a 2D world-map.

The last two pages of the epilogue tell us more about the projection itself than the whole of the rest of the book. The other 99.4% of Crane's extremely in-depth account tells us about Mercator himself, his education, work, his friends, family, and collaborators, his religion, health, and his ambition to map the (not yet entirely discovered) planet, all set alongside such history of the area (politics, regal wranglings, inquisition, war, plague, etc.) relevant to the story.

Although the author often goes off on tangents, offering background information about the latest person involved in Mercator's life (and there are many, many people involved), his writing is accessible and the tale irresistible. It took me weeks to read this book, but I always wanted to go back to it.

There might not be a lot about Mercator's projection itself, but there is an awful lot about the globes and maps he researched (despite remaining in his home region for his entire life) as well as his production methods, including his introduction of italic handwriting.

Fascinating. Loved it. Recommended for anyone interested in a comprehensive low-country history of the times (1500-1600) as well as those with a love of maps.

[Filip · Rating 1 out of 5]

More aptly, the title of this book should have been: "Mercator: a muddled list of successive places where he lived, and of the books and objects he produced". Boring and shallow. One walks away from this book with hardly any idea about Mercator the man. Surprising for a book about a famous cartographer, its author displays a cavalier attitude towards place names and geographical precision (Church names in Flanders are rendered in French; Danish isles are mentioned by their German names). Long paragraphs are dedicated to the description of specific maps; unfortunately they are not the maps shown in the illustrations.
Mercator lived in one of the most cosmopolitan regions of the world during very turbulent times. It is beyond amazing that this great basic material has led to as bland and boring a biography as this one.

[Linnaea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up from a remainders table for a few bucks, not sure whether it would really be that interesting. And it is initially a bit slow going. It took me 40pgs or so to really get into it. But it ended up being a gripping story. The book if, of course, a biography of Mercator and the story of how he came to create the first ever atlas, and to devise his famous projection. In the process, we get a fascinating look at 16th century academia, and at the burgeoning book publishing industry. In a world of Google Earth, and GPS in cars and cell phones, it's well worth taking the time to appreciate just what a colossal and extraordinary effort went in to creating the first modern maps.

[Frederik U. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Erg interessant verhaal over een buitengewone man, die de wereld in kaart bracht - hoewel hij nauwelijks de deur uitkwam - en ons de mercatorprojectie en de atlas schonk. De overdaad aan details en namen maakt het echter een moeilijk leesbaar geheel.
"Maar hij had tenminste een start gemaakt. Zevenenveertig jaar waren er verstreken sinds Mercator voor het eerst in druk had aangekondigd dat hij van plan was de hele wereld per werelddeel in kaart te brengen."

[Vic Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sixteenth century map making doesn't seem to be particularly interesting but Nicholas Crane makes it so. The fascinating work and long life of Gerald Mercator makes for a fascinating tale set in a Europe awash in religious warfare and people being burned at the stake for saying the wrong things in the wrong place.
Mercator was much admired in his time. Almost single handedly he popularized italicized fonts. He coined the term "atlas" for a book of maps. And of course revolutionized navigation with his Mercator projection maps. Mercator projections are still how most maps we deal with are transformed from the sphere of a planet to a two dimensional plane geometry representation. Most people are aware of the size distortions Mercator projections create as you move away from the equator. It's the effect of straightening the curved lines of longitude, which come together at each pole, to make them parallel and thus create a grid pattern of latitude and longitude we are all familiar with.
It is remarkable that the author created such a fascinating account of what would seem to be a rather mundane topic.

[Lukerik · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a good book. More than simply a biography of Mercator, but also a history of the Low Countries, its Renaissance and cartography. In a way it has to be, as Mercator was rather a passive figure and a quiet family man; and his letters from the first half of his life appear to have been destroyed to protect the innocent when he was imprisoned. A very useful approach for someone like me though, who really knows nothing about the Low Countries or their history. This book is very much in the style of popular non-fiction, but is the product of real scholarship. The breadth of Crane’s references are really quite amazing. In places the information comes so thick and fast you’ll have to wait until after breakfast. I learnt loads. I’ve read a few popular-style books on mapping over the years but stopped as they all seem to regurgitate the same information. This book does not and really stands apart.

[Vinko Culjak Mathieu · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thoroughly interesting read, Crane's Biography of Mercator is meticulously researched and choke-full of details from every aspect of Mercator's life. Unfortunately the depth of detail may make this book difficult for the general reader. Perhaps this book is better suited for those in academia or those with an immense interest in the history of geography.

Given all the details of the book, I was disappointed Crane did not write more about Mercator's projection. Really, it was only in the epilogue that we learn a bit about the projection. I also found the reading challenging at time because sentences often held four, five, even six ideas, leaving little room for one to reflect.

Overall, a fascinating read but challenging at times.

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I'm not a great reader of history, and I think this book could do with some judicious editing, I found it a fascinating account of the history and politics of drawing maps. The 1500s in Europe was a turbulent time of great change - Columbus had found the new world and come back, Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Catholic Church and Protestantism was on the rise, and the movable type printing press was getting on for a century old. I found it illuminating to see how the changing times were reflected in map making, as in every other aspect of life.

[Naeem · Rating 2 out of 5]

Author successfully made simple things complicated.

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hadn't read the detailed Renaissance history of the Low Countries previously. If you have read The Edge of the World by Nicholas Pye, about the North Sea, and this book, you'll have an excellent understanding of the landscape, peoples and history. Another good one is Butter: A Rich History by Elaine Khosrova as dairying was a massive subsistence lifestyle and enterprise here. I kept feeling facts click into place, like Brabant was a region exporting stone and brick - ah, that's why the Brabant horse is so heavy and low to the ground!

Gerard Kramer, later Gerard Mercator of Rupelmonde, was born in Flanders in 1512 to a world of warring dukes and dogmatic religions, where learning was valued provided it did not question and just depended on the Greeks and Bible, at a time when the New World was being discovered by the month. His father, a smallholder, made basic shoes, needed by peasants who trudged from farm to town for the winter. Farmers got no aid. Tradespeople got commissions, and skilled craftsmen got recognition by the wealthy and influential. The lad went to school and college, sponsored by a monk who was his relative. He was lucky enough to attend Louvain, a venerated seat of learning.

Hard as life seemed to a young man learning how to draft maps and shape globe section forms called gores, life was about to get harder. What wasn't understood at the time of writing this book in 2002, and is now being accepted, is that the introduction of smallpox to the Americas by Spanish sailors (and then others) had swiftly devastated the native population, which had been cutting down trees and burning the wood. Two continents' worth of forests promptly started regrowing, and sucked carbon back out of the air, dropping the planet's temperature. This made a difference as soon as 1517. In Europe we see the result: cold wet summers, freezing winters, crop failures, famines, popular revolt. 1100 people were put to death by one lord fearing the loss of his position. Burghers took over towns to protest being taxed more heavily by the nobles. Entire cities were then sacked by the armies.
"on the Schelde, the wet summer of 1520 was followed by famine... by the end of 1520, the price of grain had driven housewives to riot in Mechelen and Louvain. Imperial troops were put on the streets to restore order."
"The end of 1566 brought heavy snowfalls, and as another terrible winter settled on the charred work of the iconoclasts, plague returned."
Whatever Europe inflicted in the name of colonisation, it suffered in parallel.

Mercator adopted the sloping light lower case lettering being used in the Vatican by scribes, as easier to cram in information to a map or globe than Latin capitals. He was so pleased by the result that he wrote a textbook on writing the italic hand. Printing presses were in every town at this time, all busy, and major rivers were conduits. The Low Countries, Britain and Iberia sent out ships to trade, loot and explore. Maps were in great demand, travellers' charts more so if they were newer. Maps had to keep getting updated, even with best guesses. Maps were also political in that they showed who owned what land and potentially, routes for invasion.

Mercator was jailed, and could have been killed. Because he survived, and went to live in a quiet town with other wise people and trained his sons to assist him, he went on to complete a book of overlapping map sheets, which he named Atlas after a Greek legend. He developed the Mercator Projection to even out a sphere on two dimensions and account for the magnetic north pole as well. He wasn't the first to make a book of maps, as we see, but his joined-up approach and systematic process meant that every atlas was a winner. Mercator lived twice as long as other men of his day, and died in December 1594. The story also shows us the status of women through individuals, who seemed to do equal work, bear equal hardship, but gain little unless through family status, and were not allowed to attend college.

I can recommend this book, which never failed to interest me. Names crop up like John Dee and Queen Maria, Black Maarten and Francis Drake, Erasmus and Hieronymus Bosch. Mercator didn't travel far, but those who did brought the world to him, one way or another. Colour and black and white illustrations are helpful. Notes begin p.327, bibliography p.375, index p.387.
I read this book from the Royal Dublin Society's Library. This is an unbiased review.

[Andrew Kramer · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are few books I read more than twice. I read this book four times and counting. (This should have been made into a Netflix or Masterpiece Theatre series.) It's an exceptional book, carefully recounting the life of one of the most remarkable men of the previous millennium. Most people associate Mercator with his famous "projection", latitude and longitude lines that are still in use today! He was also the first person to publish an atlas that contained maps true to scale throughout. Oh, and he made globes and a copious number of maps, as well as writing the first instructional book on the italics font. Not too shabby for an individual who lived 82 years, twice the expected lifespan of the era.

Crane also delves into the historical context of the mid-16th century. We're told how Mercator was hounded by the Inquisition, even thrown into a castle's prison for being associated with suspected heretics. There's also Spanish King Charles' invasion of Antwerp, that city being the New York of its time.

You don't have to be interested in cartography to enjoy this book, although it would help. But if you want to read a biography of a man who in many respects was as influential as Da Vinci, Crane's book is a must-read.

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's somewhat better than my 2 stars. It's excessively detailed about his personal life and historical events (important, of course) and a little light on cartography. It's still remarkable that he could make some of the most accurate maps of the time relying only on a myriad of external sources. It was also interesting how much "political" and "religious" thought had to go into making a map in order not to upset anybody.
I preferred Longitude and The Map That Changed the World, but this is a decent complement for those interested in cartography, geography and natural history.

[Eddie Graves · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable as much for the commentary on the religious and political background of the time as it affected Mercator's life as for the biography of the man and his work, this work really takes the reader back to the 16th Century. This being a time of great change in thought and of delicate religious sensitivities, Mercator's route through this background to produce works of profound importance is sensitively explored.

[Stephen Marshall · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-written and authoritative account of the life and works of 16th century Flemish cartographer Gerard Mercator. The book also serves as a useful history of the Low Countries during this period, describing the complex political and religious forces that exerted such a strong influence over the life of Mercator and his colleagues.

[Rich Gibbons · Rating 4 out of 5]

It starts off slow but picks up and becomes a fascinating look at Mercator's life, advances in cartography, and the 16th century Low Countries.

I enjoyed this much more than I thought I would, and I certainly recommend it.

[Heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for fans of geography and history. You will learn so much- not to mention recognize names of people and places you have heard before. Will lead you to make so many connections to previous knowledge- and to want to travel to all the places Mercator mapped.

[Michal Paszkiewicz · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting life, a revolutionary man and a rigorously researched history.

[Greg Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

excellent narrative of a very substantial figure; his life and the times expounded well; worth a look

[Jennifer · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got about 60 pages, it was so boring. I was ready to jump into Mercator's adventures and how he figured out everything.

[Rob van de Merwe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Taaie kost. Boeiend om gelezen te hebben. Veel nieuwe inzichten

[Colin Nichols · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard, dense

[Brendan Coster · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a very good read, clear, and well written. Despite a few moments when I thought Crane was going to be overly dramatic with some of Mercators events, he was not, no 'mountains out of mole hills' as he wrote the Map of Mercators life.

This was a straight biography, however. I was personally hoping to go into more detail on the science/math of Mercators projections, how he came to them and how he did it. But this definitely focused on Mercator and what is known about him and his life. The very small Epilogue is also fairly weak in explaining how Mercator, his projections, and his Atlas made it's way from ~1595 to us today. But, if anything, I congratulate the author for staying focused, that I still want to know more and am looking for other sources is testament to the work.

So, 5 stars for a great biography.

[Lolla · Rating 1 out of 5]

I set sail for unknown shores opening this book but floundered within 50 pages. Crane seems to delight is showing off his arcane vocabulary and research into glosses on glosses on only tangentially relevant volumes, all of which does nothing to enrich the text, which it might have done inthe hands of a moe deft writer. This book tells you about the grass genus growing in the grey silt base fields below the granite rocks near the sloping hillside beneath the blah blah and apart from interesting snippets about Erasmus, does not reveal the personage who undertook this amazing feat half a millenium ago. BOOOOORING!

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Being immersed throughout my career in the world that Mercator created I started this book with great expectations. Unfortunately, for me, it delved too much into European political squabbles at the expense of telling the story behind that word we take for granted on charts- Mercator. However, for anyone interested in sea going navigation, or Cartography this book is a must.

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