Easy to read? Yes. Entertaining? In parts, yes. However, I found it far from being complete. Where is Harrison, where is Maskelyne? Where is the Longitude Comission and the long struggle between the protagonists about how to find the most suitable way to determine longitude? Where is Cook? Where is Gauss? Some are mentioned by one sentence only, others not at all. That is disappointing. I realized that there are better books around on this topic. Better read Dava Sobel's LONGITUDE, Ken Alder's THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS or Stephan Zweig's MAGELLAN, to name just a few. There is stuff around on e.g. triangulation, the meridians and the Date Line (books and on the web) that gives far more insight into the topic than the common knowledge that is presented in PLOTTING THE GLOBE. Sorry Mr Ariel and no offense, but I also found your constant repetition of your achievements and your obvious and unreflected pro-American and con-European attitude somewhat tiring.

Plotting the Globe: Stories of Meridians, Parallels, and the International Date Line (Explorations in World Maritime History) PDF

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