Author: Alastair Bonnett
Title: Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies
Narrator: Derek Perkins
Publication Info: Tantor Media, 2014
ISBN: 1494505827
Summary/Review:
Dr. Bonnet collects a compendium of curiosities in geography, places in the world at the borders, no-mans lands, enclaves, dead cities, floating islands, and ephemeral places.
Destinations include:
- Sandy Island, marked on maps in the Indian Ocean for over a century despite the fact that it never existed.
- The historic Old Mecca, destroyed to make way for amenities for pilgrims.
- Alan Sonfist’s artistic creation of pre-colonial plantings in New York called Time Landscape.
- The lost Aral Sea, now the Aralqum Desert.
- Kijong-dong , the North Korean “Peace Village” along the DMZ with South Korea.
- Pripyat, the city abandoned due to the Cherynobyl disaster.
- The intriguingly named Archaeological Park of Sicilian Incompletion in Giarre.
- The interlocking Dutch and Belgian enclaves of Baarle-Nassau and Baarle-Hertog .
- The micronation of Sealand.
- Spray ice islands used for petroleum exploration in the Arctic
- The RV park in the LAX parking lot which serves as the permanent home for many air carrier personnel.
- Nowhere, the Burning Man-style art event in northeast Spain
Derek Perkins voice lends a curmudgeonly world explorer gruffness to the narration. A fun book and informative.
Recommended books: Micronations: The Lonely Planet Guide to Self-Proclaimed Nations by John Ryan, Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places by John R. Stilgoe, and Lights Out for the Territory: 9 Excursions in the Secret History of London by Iain Sinclair
Rating: ***1/2
Panorama of the Mountains 