203 – Favourite Strange Map Book Covers 2007
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The Mighty Barrister alerted me to a post on the blog of the Book Design Review by Joseph Sullivan of Chicago, listing his favourite book covers of 2007. Two of ‘em are map-based (and sufficiently strange to be included here):
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Words Without Borders (cover design by Helen Yentus): contains 28 works of literature never before published in English. The international flair of the book is heightened by the map-like cover, with in the legend the names of some of the multinational array of writers, including Ariel Dorfman (Chile), Jonathan Safran Foer (US), Günter Grass (Germany), Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt) and Wole Soyinka (Nigeria).
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The Cigarette Century (cover design by Rodrigo Corral): the book by Allan M. Brandt relates ‘the rise, fall, and deadly persistence of the product that defined America’ and illustrates this nation-defining characteristic by showing the eastern half of the United States made up out of the pernicious little smoke-sticks. It’s probably taking things too far to try to count how many cigarettes constitute each state. Two are quite easily countable, however: Florida, as far as I can see, equals about 12 cigarettes, Michigan (including the Upper Peninsula’s 4 ciggies) equals 10 smokes.
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