The Pigeons and the Witch Doctor: Adventures of a Modern Map Maker | 
 enlarge | Author: Heng Thung
Publisher: Lucky Press, LLC
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy New: $13.73
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Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 2337342
Media: Paperback
Pages: 224
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 6.9 x 4.8 x 0.6
ISBN: 0971331839
Dewey Decimal Number: 526.982092
EAN: 9780971331839
ASIN: 0971331839
Publication Date: August 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Aerial photo interpretation remains an art, in spite of all attempts to give it a scientific aura. The science of collecting imagery has advanced very rapidly, and now it is possible to see many things that were previously never witnessed by the human eye. But to read the face of the earth requires more than just science. Maybe it is not really the problem of man himself trying to be able to see and explain what he sees, but maybe it is his environment, which keeps its ever-changing prerogative. This land, our earth, as we look from higher and higher perches, appears to become more like an atlas with continents and seas, with forest and land, mountains and with rivers snaking over the landscape Looking back over four and a half decades as a photo interpreter, it has been a very exciting life . . . a life traveling all over the globe, sometimes seeing things and documenting land I was never to set foot on. There were no limits and no borders to cross. Aerial photographs have no frontiers. Visits to the actual sites to field check the data, however, took me to many continents: from East Africa to Asia and from the Arctic to the Pacific. It was one hell of a great adventure. . . Heng Thung, Asheville, North Carolina, 2003
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| Customer Reviews:
Bravo to the Witch Doctor July 12, 2004
Tom Wagner (Ann Arbor, MI United States)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
"Pigeons and the Witch Doctor" is a delightful read that chronicals the life and times of a most remarkable man: Dr. Heng Thung. Heng is an Indonesian-born mapmaker, educated in the United States, and full-time thorn in the side of small-minded American, European, Asian, and UN bureaucrats and fuctionaries. Heng's energy, concern for human welfare, and single-minded devotion to good geographical information often brings him into conflict with suspicious customs officials and greedy politicians. Heng modestly describes his successes and failures in looking for oil in Sumatra, counting native peoples and fields of opium poppies in Laos, teaching in Holland, and mapping land uses and looking for diamonds in East Africa. Along the way, are both funny and sad encounters with buracuraies and a host of interesting characters. Anyone who would like to know what Third World mapmaking is about will enjoy this book.
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