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.
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