Adding a comment because I hope folks will stop and read this delightful review about a curious mind.

Here are a few things I stopped to ponder about:

1. How important are visual representations for understanding reality? What about beautiful visual representations?

2. Why are so many pioneering minds left by society to struggle with mountains(ha) of debt?

(EDIT: Formatting)

Why did so many pioneers die of broken legs and dysentery? Why do most restaurants go out of business?

Thanks for the response morlockabove!

I interpret your response to suggest that taking risks comes with consequences and that most of the time those consequences are negative.

My question was meant to ask (in a round-about way) why collectively we don't subsidize risk-taking (especially when the risk-takers have a track record of producing neat things)?

There is also a previous popular book about William Smith's geological maps: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25014.The_Map_That_Chang...