Murder & Mayhem in Portland, Oregon


J.D. Chandler - 2013
    The brutal Ardenwald axe murders. The retribution killings by Chinatown tongs. The fiendish acts of the Dark Strangler. In this compelling account, author JD Chandler chronicles the coverups, the false confessions, the miscarriages of justice and the investigative twists and turns of Portland's infamous crimes while providing valuable historical perspective. From the untimely end of the Black Mackintosh Bandit to the convoluted hunt for the Milwaukie Monster, join Chandler as he unveils the shadowy heart of the city, acknowledges the officers who sought justice and remembers the individuals whose lives were claimed by violence.

Mercator: The Man Who Mapped the Planet


Nicholas Crane - 2002
    At the center of the exploratory vortex were the cartographers who were painstakingly piecing together the evidence to create ever more accurate pictures of the planet. Mercator was the greatest of all of them. His inspiration—the map—solved the dimensional riddle that had vexed cosmographers for so long: How could the three-dimensional globe be converted into a two-dimensional map while retaining true compass bearings? His resulting projection revolutionized navigation and has become the most common worldview. For the first time, people were able to see the world on paper and their place in it.Nicholas Crane, a geographer himself, has combined a keen eye for historical detail with a gift for vivid storytelling to produce this masterly and highly acclaimed biography of the man who mapped the planet.

Introduction to Mineralogy


William D. Nesse - 1999
    It presents the important traditional content of mineralogy including crystallography, chemical bonding, controls on mineral structure, mineral stability, and crystal growth to provide a foundation that enables students to understand the nature and occurrence of minerals. Physical, optical, and X-ray powder diffraction techniques of mineral study are described in detail, and common chemical analytical methods are outlined as well. Detailed descriptions of over 100 common minerals are provided, and the geologic context within which these minerals occur is emphasized. Appendices provide tables and diagrams to help students with mineral identification, using both physical and optical properties. Numerous line drawings, photographs, and photomicrographs help make complex concepts understandable. Introduction to Mineralogy not only provides specific knowledge about minerals but also helps students develop the intellectual tools essential for a solid, scientific education. This comprehensive text is useful for undergraduate students in a wide range of mineralogy courses.

Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey


Rachel Hewitt - 2010
    Map of a Nation tells the story of the creation of the Ordnance Survey map - the first complete, accurate, affordable map of the British Isles.

Theater of the World: The Maps that Made History


Thomas Reinertsen Berg - 2017
    Thomas Reinertsen Berg takes us all the way from the mysterious symbols of the Stone Age to Google Earth, exploring how the ability to envision what the world looked like developed hand in hand with worldwide exploration. Along the way, we meet visionary geographers and heroic explorers along with other unknown heroes of the map-making world, both ancient and modern. And the stunning visual material allows us to witness the extraordinary breadth of this history with our own eyes.

Fodor's Pacific Northwest with Oregon, Washington, and Vancouver


Fodor's Travel Publications Inc. - 1987
    Customize your trip with simple planning tools • Top experiences & attractions • Practical advice for getting around • Easy-to-read color regional mapsExplore the Portland, Seattle, British Columbia and beyond • Discerning Fodor’s Choice picks for hotels, restaurants, sights, and more • “Word of Mouth” tips from fellow Fodor’s travelers • Illustrated features on whale-watching, wineries, and Pike's Market Place • Best open-air adventures, local breweries, and regional cuisineOpinions from destination experts • Fodor’s writers reveal their favorite local haunts • Revised annually to provide the latest information

Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks


Ken Jennings - 2011
    Much as Brainiac offered a behind-the-scenes look at the little-known demimonde of competitive trivia buffs, Maphead finally gives equal time to that other downtrodden underclass: America's map nerds.In a world where geography only makes the headlines when college students are (endlessly) discovered to be bad at it, these hardy souls somehow thrive. Some crisscross the map working an endless geographic checklist: visiting all 3,143 U.S. counties, for example, or all 936 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Some pore over million-dollar collections of the rarest maps of the past; others embrace the future by hunting real-world cartographic treasures like "geocaches" or "degree confluences" with GPS device in hand. Some even draw thousands of their own imaginary maps, lovingly detailing worlds that never were.Ken Jennings was a map nerd from a young age himself, you will not be surprised to learn, even sleeping with a bulky Hammond atlas at the side of his pillow, in lieu of the traditional Teddy bear. As he travels the nation meeting others of his tribe--map librarians, publishers, "roadgeeks," pint-sized National Geographic Bee prodigies, the computer geniuses behind Google Maps and other geo-technologies--he comes to admire these geographic obsessives. Now that technology and geographic illiteracy are increasingly insulating us from the lay of the land around us, we are going to be needing these people more than ever. Mapheads are the ones who always know exactly where they are--and where everything else is as well.

Mohenjo-daro: The History and Legacy of the Ancient Settlement of the Indus Valley Civilization


Charles River Editors - 2016
    It was a metropolis of great cultural, economic, and political importance that dates from the beginning of the 3rd millennium BCE. Although it primarily flourished between approximately 2500 and 1500 BCE, the city had longer lasting influences on the urbanization of the Indian subcontinent for centuries after its abandonment. It is believed to have been one of two capital cities of the Indus Civilization, its twin being Harappa located further north in Punjab, Pakistan.Mohenjo-daro is an enigmatic settlement, which confuses simple definitions of what a city consists of. It has revealed little evidence of palaces, contains few definite religious buildings, and appears to have never been involved in any external or internal military conflict. The inhabitants’ writing has not been deciphered, and little is known about their religious and post-mortuary beliefs. Nonetheless, the city’s importance is epitomized by its monumental buildings and walls, enormous manmade platforms, innovative architectural techniques, and evidence that they engaged in trade over vast distances, with high-quality artifacts sent from the Indus Valley as far as Mesopotamia and even Africa. Of particular note was their ingenious drainage system –one of the earliest means by which sewage was drained out of the city. No other urban site of similar size had a hydraulic network as complex and effective as that of Mohenjo-daro, and it would only be surpassed thousands of years later by the network of aqueducts in Rome during the third century CE. For centuries this city was believed to have sprung into existence suddenly and without precedent, with a highly standardized system of urban development, art, and architecture that is emulated in contemporary settlements across the Indus River Valley in a phenomenon known as the “Pan-Indus system”. Although this view has changed over the last few decades, there exists no definitive hypothesis as to how they grew such a complex urban society so quickly. Fittingly, the city has an equally intriguing and mysterious narrative that explains its decline and eventual disappearance, a tale that gives the site its name: the “Hill of the Dead”. The Indus Valley Civilization was forgotten for millennia, until 20th century archaeologists rediscovered and began excavations at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. Today only foundations remain, but the site’s importance is represented by its UNESCO World Heritage status, awarded in 1980 for being a site of outstanding cultural importance to the common heritage of humanity.Mohenjo-daro: The History and Legacy of the Ancient Settlement of the Indus Valley Civilization looks at the history of the site and the archaeological work on it.

Cataclysms on the Columbia: The Great Missoula Floods


John Eliot Allen - 1986
    One follows geological research that challenged the scientific paradigm of the early 20th century, and the other chronicles the result of that research: the discovery of powerful prehistoric floods that shaped the Pacific Northwest. The cataclysms at the end of the last Ice Age left a scabland of buttes, dry falls, and rocky gorges, but it took the detective work of geologist J Harlen Bretz to prove it to the world. His lifetime of research and unshakeable belief changed geology forever.

The Next Tsunami: Living on a Restless Coast


Bonnie Henderson - 2014
    The Next Tsunami: Living on a Restless Coast is the gripping story of the geological discoveries—and the scientists who uncovered them—that signal the imminence of a catastrophic tsunami on the Northwest Coast.

Atlas of Vanishing Places: The Lost Worlds as They Were and as They are Today


Travis Elborough - 2019
    Discover ancient seats of power and long-forgotten civilizations through the Mayan city of Palenque; delve into the mystery of a disappeared Japanese islet; and uncover the incredible hidden sites like the submerged Old Adaminaby, once abandoned but slowly remerging.With beautiful maps and stunning colour photography, Atlas of Vanishing Places shows these places as they once were as well as how they look today: a fascinating guide to lost lands and the fragility of our relationship with the world around us.

Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States


George R. Stewart - 1945
    George R. Stewart's love of the surprising story, and his focus not just on language but on how people interact with their environment, make Names on the Land a unique window into the history and sociology of America. From the first European names in what would later be the United States; Ponce de León's flowery Florída, Cortez' semi-mythical isle of California, and the red river Rio Colorado; to New England, New Amsterdam, and New Sweden; the French and the Russians; border ruffians and Boston Brahmins: Names on the Land is no dry dictionary but a fascinating panorama of language in action, bursting at the seams with revealing details. In lively, passionate writing, Stewart explains where Indian names were likely to be kept, and why; the fad that gave rise to dozens of Troys and to Athens, Georgia, as well as suburban Parksides, Brookmonts, and Woodcrest Manors; why "Brooklyn" is Dutch but looks English and why "Arkansas" is Arkansaw, except of course when it isn't. His book has delighted generations of road-trippers, armchair travelers, and anyone who ever wondered how their hometown, or (more likely) the next town over, could be called that. Stewart's answer is always a story; one of the countless stories that lie behind the rich and strange diversity of America.

Portlandness: A Cultural Atlas


David Banis - 2015
    Modern cartography tells the hidden stories of Portland in these fascinating and colorful infographic maps. When mapmaking takes on nontraditional topics like patterns of graffiti,  locations of strip clubs, or even which neighborhoods favor which house colors, finding your way around the city takes on a whole new meaning. Each map starts with the gathering of at least one data set about a given topic, then translating that to a visual format that blends traditional cartographic skills with modern graphic design.

The Great Arc: The Dramatic Tale of How India Was Mapped and Everest Was Named


John Keay - 2000
    Its 1,600 miles of inch-perfect survey took nearly fifty years. Hailed as one of the most stupendous works in the history of science, it was also one of the most perilous. Snowy mountains and tropical jungles, floods and fevers, tigers and scorpions all took their toll on the band of surveyors as they crossed the Indian subcontinent carrying instruments weighing half a ton.Willian Lambton, an endearing genius, had conceived the idea; George Everest, an impossible martinet, completed it. This saga of astounding adventure and gigantic personalities not only resulted in the first accurate measurement of the highest peak in the world but defined India as we know it and significant advanced our scientific understanding of the planet.

The Measure of Manhattan: The Tumultuous Career and Surprising Legacy of John Randel, Jr., Cartographer, Surveyor, Inventor


Marguerite Holloway - 2013
    (1787–1865) was an eccentric and flamboyant surveyor. Renowned for his inventiveness as well as for his bombast and irascibility, Randel was central to Manhattan’s development but died in financial ruin. Telling Randel’s engrossing and dramatic life story for the first time, this eye-opening biography introduces an unheralded pioneer of American engineering and mapmaking.Charged with “gridding” what was then an undeveloped, hilly island, Randel recorded the contours of Manhattan down to the rocks on its shores. He was obsessed with accuracy and steeped in the values of the Enlightenment, in which math and science promised dominion over nature. The result was a series of maps, astonishing in their detail and precision, which undergird our knowledge about the island today. During his varied career Randel created surveying devices, designed an early elevated subway, and proposed a controversial alternative route for the Erie Canal—winning him admirers and enemies.The Measure of Manhattan is more than just the life of an unrecognized engineer. It is about the ways in which surveying and cartography changed the ground beneath our feet. Bringing Randel’s story into the present, Holloway travels with contemporary surveyors and scientists trying to envision Manhattan as a wild island once again. Illustrated with dozens of historical images and antique maps, The Measure of Manhattan is an absorbing story of a fascinating man that captures the era when Manhattan—indeed, the entire country—still seemed new, the moment before canals and railroads helped draw a grid across the American landscape.