“. . . Family represents the reality of which Christmas is the dream. It is, of course, Family (messy, complex, miserable, happy, so many gradations of those last two words) that is the real gift, beneath the wrapping. Family is the daily miracle, and Christmas is the enforcement of ideals that, in truth, do not matter. It would be tempting therefore to say, “Well, then ditch Christmas!” the same way people say “Ditch God” or “Ditch marriage,” but people find it hard to do these things because they feel that there is more than a ghost in these machines; there is an animating spirit.”

“Santa help me, but I believe this, too. You know you believe it when you start your own little family with some person you met four years ago in a bar, and then he tried to open the presents on Christmas Eve because that’s what he did in his family and you have the strong urge to run screaming from the building holding your banner about the end and how it is nigh. It is a moving and comic thing–a Murdochian scuffle between the Real and the Dream–to watch a young couple as they teeter around the Idea of Christmas, trying to avoid internecine festive warfare . . .”

“. . . Christmas, childhood, the past, families, fathers, regret of all kinds–no one wants to be the grinch who steals these things, but you leave the door open with the hope he might come in and relieve you of your heavy stuff. Christmas is heavy.”

This past December a gentleman came in the store looking for a book he’d heard about on the radio. It was an atlas that was organized by particular data sets, and the maps were distorted in accordance with that particular set. After some searching, we figured out that it was called The Atlas of the Real World, and that it was due out soon. Well, it was delayed for a while, and I (and the gentleman) forgot about it. It finally arrived a few weeks ago, and it’s so much better than I expected. I was envisioning a dry, academic tome decipherable only by professional cartographers — instead I was greeted with a colorful cover, short and easy-to-understand explanations, and a unique and insightful way of looking at the world.

What sets this book aside from typical atlases is the way the maps are created. For each map, a particular data set or data point is selected, and then the landmasses are distorted in size to reflect that piece of data. On page 292 the map is labeled “Malaria Cases”, and Africa expands to fill the entire middle third of the map, while the Americas, Europe, and Asia shrink to almost nothing.

Maps are paired up so that you can compare corresponding statistics — for instance, on pages 144 and 145, the left hand map shows Car Exports and the right hand map shows Car Imports. Germany and Japan dominate the car export side, while the United States dwarfs the rest of the world on the car import map.

I think this would make a fantastically unique coffee table book — it might actually give you something to think about rather than just page after page of pretty photos.