The Curious History of Mazes by Julie E Bounford

192 pages, AMZN

Before I delve into my review of the book I want to mention that the Amazon page for this book is excellent if you click on the link above. Specifically, the “From the Publishers” section - each chapter has an illustration and a quick summary.

The book is a great mix of the history, uses, and symbolism of mazes and labyrinths around the world. The illustrations and examples are excellent and I really enjoyed the breaks to solve unique mazes along the way.

What I learned in this book (at least some of it):

• “In some Meso-American cultures, it was believed that the wicked could be “mazed” in the underworld, so their souls would not return” ; Which to me seems like a nice pitch to a new horror movie

• I have never seen a Sidereal maze before, based on the constellations. Very interesting and fun to solve (page 45 in kindle version). Or the Switch Maze (Page 105).

• I learned about the city of Saffron Walden in England, a city with a hedge maze and the largest turf maze in Europe at 132 feet from corner to corner. Seems like a nice place for a maze museum ?

• That Francesco Segala, an Italian architect from Padua in the 15th century may have created the first picture mazes ever (with illustrations in the book !)

• The first 3 dimensional maze was built in the 1830’s by Stuart Landsborough using wodden board to create a second story on a maze.

• The strategy game Nine Men’s Morris that was popular to be played at turf mazes.

• There are 270 labyrinths on the London Underground, created by English artist Mark Wallinger in 2013 to mark the Underground’s 150th Anniversary. You can see some of them here.

• Cloud cities by Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno, which you should just see to understand.

• There is a nice illustration comparing the classical and medieval labyrinth designs (figure 2 page 46) that I found interesting.

What this book does best: The mix of mazes with history and examples makes for a fun reading experience. The mazes are a break from reading - unless you get to a hard one - then the reading is the break!