Fun with maps

You might think a terrible map would be one that, for example, shows Illinois west of the Mississippi River, not east.Yet Michel Howe in his Terrible Maps doesn't take maps seriously. The idea in his book is to have fun with them.

Some of his maps are, in fact, hilarious, as promised in his subtitle: "Hilarious Maps for a Ridiculous World." Others are yawners.

The map on the cover shows a typical Howe map. It shows the United Status. Indiana is in red. "Outdiana" is in green. Similarly a map of Africa shows Togo in red. Other countries are labeled "For here." A map of France is called "Map of Nice people." Only the city of Nice is in red. The rest of the country is green.

Howe tends to repeat the same joke over and over. For example, "Railway map of Antarctica" is blank. Likewise a map of Roman air bases in 2nd century AD. After the first, they're yawners.

Sometimes Howe really gets clever. One map shows the word for coma in all European languages. In every case it is either coma or koma, except for Poland, where the word is spiaczka. Another map shows countries with the moon on their flag and other countries with their flag on the moon.

All in all, the book is worth a few laughs, quick to read and fun to show to friends.