Atlas Obscura cites Hornsby’s book in article on ‘Wonders of New York’ map

Atlas Obscura quoted a book by University of Maine geographer Stephen Hornsby in the article “Step into a midcentury map of New York, packed with weird local lore.” “The Wonders of New York,” by New Jersey–born cartographer Nils Hansell, is on the cover of Hornsby’s book, “Picturing America: The Golden Age of Pictorial Maps.” Inside, Hornsby makes the case that maps like this one — colorful, flamboyant, and not especially useful for navigation — were the offspring of the advertising culture that boomed in the mid-20th century, the article states. Hansell’s map is essentially selling the idea of Manhattan as the place to be in the early 1950s, according to the article. It captured the borough’s buzz, Hornsby writes, in the form of the “gleaming modernist skyscrapers and the new United Nations building, transatlantic liners, and newly introduced jet passenger planes.”