New York: The Photo Atlas [Hardcover]

Getmapping (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 21, 2004

For those who think they know the streets of New York City like the back of their hand, think again. For those who don't know how to get around Gotham, here's a chance to get to know the city in all its glory. New York: The Photo Atlas combines exquisite aerial photography and de-tailed street atlas maps to provide a truly unique perspective of the city -- high above the concrete. The breadth of the area covered is stunning: All five boroughs are included, as well as several New York and New Jersey suburbs. Trace your bike route, find your apartment building, or take in the sights without leaving your living room. Even if you don't know New York well, you will find this book fascinating.

The atlas is a breeze to use. The photography and the cartography share the same standard grid system so you can cross-reference quickly between the two elements, and every street in the area shown is indexed for both types of maps. Both the photography and cartography are "map accurate": the photography has been geo-corrected, a process that removes the distortions in the original aerial photography. Every street in NYC -- more than 40,000 in total -- has been indexed with two page numbers, one relating to the photos and the other relating to the cartography.

Both native and honorary New Yorkers will be thrilled to own the groundbreaking New York: The Photo Atlas -- the most revealing New York atlas ever published.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From thousands of feet up, New York, with its grid of blocks, looks more like a circuit board than a city; its bodies of water more like airbrushed spills than the gigantic moats they in fact are. This giant book is just what it says it is: New York City photographed from space, with accompanying maps that give names to the bleached out, anonymous-looking checkerboards that appear in the photos snaked through with light-looking lines of asphalt—more than 40,000 streets in all. The scale of this 10½" × 14½" book, and its weight, add to the sense of enormity; readers will soon zoom in, however, flipping back and forth between maps containing their favorite blocks or sites and pictures showing them with their surrounding environs. For anyone who has ever pored over an atlas and filled it in with their mind's eye, this city-between-covers will be a wish come true.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Getmapping was established in 1998 specifically to produce the first ever complete full-color digital, photographic map of the UK -- the Millennium Map™. Getmapping's two- and three-dimensional aerial photography and terrain information -- used by professionals and the general public alike -- is second to none. Other volumes include England: The Photographic Atlas, London: The Photographic Atlas, and Edinburgh: The Photographic Atlas.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Collins Reference (September 21, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060594993
• ISBN-13: 978-0060594992
• Product Dimensions: 14.3 x 10.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,696,353 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars See Everything, Simply Everything, October 13, 2004

By 

John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: New York: The Photo Atlas (Hardcover)

The first thing I did was to look up my daughters house in Astoria. It was there. And I've always wondered what the streets between the Port Authority Bus Terminal and the tunnel to New Jersey looked like. And in crossing from Staten Island to New Jersey on the Outerbridge Crossing it looks like there are a couple of sunken ships just to the north of the bridge. You only get a moment to look before the railing blocks the view. They're pictured here too, page 306.

This spectacular book consists of aerial photographs of the entire city of New York. Photographed in color from a height of 5,500 feet, during the summer of 2003, on perhaps the clearest day in history; the photographs are both beautiful and current. Combined with the photographs are standard maps that serve as a reference to the photographs. Finally there's an index of streets that will take you to either the maps or photographs.

It's clear that the people putting this together had a pretty good idea about how to do such a book, and it shows.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great in concept but flawed in execution, December 17, 2004

By 

Jerry H. Tempelman "[e-mail]" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: New York: The Photo Atlas (Hardcover)

The book is complete and unique, in that it depicts all of Manhattan as well as the other boroughs. Still, it was a bit of a disappointment, especially after reading the other reviews. The book could have been much more user-friendly with two changes.
* The aerial photographs are laid out according to latitude and longitude. For Manhattan, this means all plates feel "crooked" and disorienting in comparison to the usual layout on street maps. It also means that you need to flip more between pages to see certain sections of town in their entirety.
* The book has two separate sections: photos and street maps. The maps would have been more helpful if they had been displayed on the opposite page of their corresponding aerial photos. That way they could serve as a legend to the photos.

The book is so large and heavy, I suspect the shipping costs would mean it is hardly worth returning, which is my main reason for keeping it. But if you want to look at New York from up above, there are a number of existing books that are far more fun, even if they are not quite as complete as this one.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars so cool, September 13, 2004

By 

Shakti Shukla "Food, drink, dogs and friends ... (Arlington, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: New York: The Photo Atlas (Hardcover)

I got this as a gift for a friend who left New York for the west coast. I ended up just loving every picture on every page -- the detail is INCREDIBLE, you can see your own apartment, famous buildings, everything -- so I kept it for my own coffee table and ordered another one for my L.A. friend. Basically anyone who loves New York will love this book. . . . Who doesn't love New York?!