Unruly Places

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A tour of the world s hidden geographies from disappearing islands to forbidden deserts and a stunning testament to how mysterious the world remains todayAt a time when Google Maps Street View can take you on a virtual tour of Yosemite s remotest trails and cell phones double as navigational systems, it s hard to imagine there s any uncharted ground left on the planet In Unruly Places, Alastair Bonnett goes to some of the most unexpected, offbeat places in the world to reinspire our geographical imagination.Bonnett s remarkable tour includes moving villages, secret cities, no man s lands, and floating islands He explores places as disorienting as Sandy Island, an island included on maps until just two years ago despite the fact that it never existed Or Sealand, an abandoned gun platform off the English coast that a British citizen claimed as his own sovereign nation, issuing passports and crowning his wife as a princess Or Baarle, a patchwork of Dutch and Flemish enclaves where walking from the grocery store s produce section to the meat counter can involve crossing national borders.An intrepid guide down the road much less traveled, Bonnett reveals that the most extraordinary places on earth might be hidden in plain sight, just around the corner from your apartment or underfoot on a wooded path Perfect for urban explorers, wilderness ramblers, and armchair travelers struck by wanderlust, Unruly Places will change the way you see the places you inhabit. Read Unruly Places – kino-fada.fr Books about maps and weird geography always get me I m a sucker for them.Alastair Bonnett offers up Off the Map to us geo nerds and it s premise is to talk about many weird places that have their weirdness due to several reasons He breaks the reasons down into several categories or chapters dead places, in between places, places that never were and renegade places You ll read about an island that was on maps into the early 2000s, even on google maps, that never existed, a town that grew up Books about maps and weird geography always get me I m a sucker for them.Alastair Bonnett offers up Off the Map to us geo nerds and it s premise is to talk about many weird places that have their weirdness due to several reasons He breaks the reasons down into several categories... authentic topophilia can never be satisfied with a diet of sunny villages the most fascinating places are often also the most disturbing, entrapping, and appalling they are also often temporary in ten years time most of the places we will be exploring will look very different many will not be there at all but just as biophilia doesn t lessen because we know that nature is often horrible and that all life is transitory, genuine topophilia knows that our bond with place isn t about finding authentic topophilia can never be sati...I really enjoyed this book, and it will go right next to Atlas of Remote Islands on my geeky geography wishlist.The author uncovers some obscure instances of secret lost unknown places, like floating pumice islands, towns not listed on maps in Russia, underground cities, and disappea...Apart from some obscure bits of therainforest and Indonesian jungles we think that there can be no undiscovered parts of the world can there Surely, we must have discovered everything on Google Earth by now Off The Map sets about putting that record straight In this book, Bonnett helps us discover secret places, unexpected islands, slivers of a metropolis and hidden villages Russia seems to havethan its fair share of secret and abandoned cities There is Zheleznogorsk, a milit Apart from some obscure bits of therainforest and Indonesian jungles we think that there can be no undiscovered parts of the world can there Surely, we must have discovered everything on Google Earth by now Off The Map sets about putting that record straight In this book, Bonnett helps us discover secret places, unexpected islands, slivers of a metropolis and...In Unruly Places, Alastair Bonnett has written neither a tour guide nor a history book Instead, it s a sort of mash up of history, philosophy and sociology applied to the geography of little known places on the earth In separate chapters, the author examines places as diverse as islands that appear only on maps, underground colonies, deserted cities, male only religious territories, and even urban gutterspace, or slivers of land between buildings.Facts are my thing Theory not so much I f In U...I wanted to like this book a hell of a lotthan I did I found it all a little tooordinary The places or non places were well described, but the words lacked that magic sense of evocativeness, and the what they tell us about the world justmissed, somehow Maybe it s because it s formatted as a series of a...As stated in the publisher marketing this is not a book you need to read cover to cover and I have not though I would like to go back at some point and do so because it is clear the author has a particular flow to these essays in mind Instead, I have been like a chicken pecking here and there in the grass when just s...I was disappointed in this book I wanted to like it, and perhaps I am too much of a geographic stickler, but the read did not live up to the premise of the title The author did not travel to many of the places listed, and there are too many places listed Nor does the col...This is a great book to pick up when you don t have the time or attention span to sit down and get engrossed in something lengthy It feels almost like a compilation of a column from a magazine a couple of pages devoted to each entry.The theme is interesting places around the world The focus is on the interstitial thin...Well, it took me longer to shelve the countries than it will to reviewThis was a great drop in drop out book the way I used it was for a half hour here and a half hour there There are forty seven short stories in this book, divided into eight themes sections They average about six pages each, so very manageable.Of the forty seven stories, there were probably 10 great stories, another fifteen good ones, and at the other end, probably 10 that were terrible That leaves a dozen that were rea Well, it took me longer to shelve the countries than it will to reviewThis was a great drop in drop out book the way I used it was for a half hour here and a half hour there There are forty seven short stories in this book, divided into eight themes sections They average about six pages each, so very manageable.Of the forty seven stories, there were probably 10 great stories, another fifteen good ones, and at the other end, probably 10 that were terrible That leaves a dozen that were readable without being muchOn that basis it ishit than miss, and tracks around three stars...

Unruly Places
  • English
  • 02 July 2017
  • Hardcover
  • 270 pages
  • 054410157X
  • Alastair Bonnett
  • Unruly Places