Customer Reviews

Hitting the Road: The Art of the American Road Map

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A treasured trip down memory lane when the country was crossed with roads instead of major freeways and the towns didn't all look alike! The writing is excellent and the road maps used to illustratate the text remind us of better days in auto travel and also in advertising.

I collect UK Ordnance Survey maps and this book tempts me to collect some US roads maps. The quality of the pictures is wonderfull and the commentary is excellent. If you like this you should like "Map Cover Art" by John Paddy Brown about OS map covers. Now out of print apparently but amazon will try and look for you . Some of the covers from the 20's are very similar to those in the UK.

This is a good example of those delightful books that Chronicle used to publish before they got heavily involved in pc designed titles. The pages are a treat to look at and the choice of the two hundred maps first class.

Two of Robert Lee's wonderful license plate paintings are included for Shell maps of New York and Missouri and I always thought it odd that license plates weren't used on more maps as a design motif. A favorite illustration was the companies gas station, frequently from a bird's eye perspective. Pages eighty-four and five have a beautiful painting of a Sinclair unit.

Yorke and Margolies cover the history of the free oil-company maps with easy to read copy and they both obviously regret the passing of this colorful marketing product. The chapter titled 'Freeway's end: the road map folds' has some maps from the seventies and early eighties showing their covers with simple corporate graphics (mostly abstract) and that was it, the golden age had well and truly ended and with satnav as standard we'll never see a road map again.

I find it hard to believe that this seems to be the only book to cover the subject (and so well) and another reason to find a copy for your shelves.

***LOOK AT SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.