My family has a Rand McNally Road Atlas from the 1970s that is nice and detailed. This looks like it: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0528844423 (Note dimensions—it's quite large.) There's a "deluxe" version that covers Canada and Mexico too.

But why, why do you want such a thing??

Yeah, this one - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0528973762 - seems like it might be better, although it's a shame there aren't a few more comments about it. If you look at one or two of the others (the AAA one, and the Nat. Geographic one, for instance), in between the glowing praise you'll see the odd "we actually got /lost/ because this didn't have the side-roads we needed" stuff.

Not that I'm in that kind of a situation, but I like detail, and it's the out-of-the-way stuff that has odd/cool names, and so forth.

Why ? well, i love reading maps, and this book i'm currently reading, _blue highways_, mentions all sorts of random little places, and since my US geographical knowledge is fairly atrocious, even at a larger scale, i figure maybe it's time i did something about it.

Hee, you have no idea how amusing I find this: (1) you don't own a car; (2) you live quite a long way indeed from the US; (3) you are concerned that an atlas of 250 pages, each almost a foot square, is INSUFFICIENTLY DETAILED.

You like maps, huh? Have you seen this: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1582341001 I'll bring for you to borrow on Sunday.

yeah, but like i said, it makes for better reading. if i just wanted main cities i'd go look at somebody's wall map.

(it's not just a good map of the US i want - i want good maps of everywhere !)

i haven't seen that, no. sounds interesting.

Oh c'mon, everyone scoured the Melways for fun as a kid, didn't they?

absolutely. I even drew my own (100% invented) maps for a year or two, too (look, I was about 11. leave me alone). but I didn't know anything about hills and contours and stuff at the time, so I guess I should've called the place "flatland", or something.

re: leaving small towns off. It's one of George W. Bush's "homeland security" initiatives, alongside removing formerly public information from libraries. The ultimate goal is to have a situation like in the USSR, where entire cities of strategic significance (i.e., Magnetogorsk) officially didn't exist.

And I don't think that traversing maps for fun is limited to a childhood activity. Or maybe I'm just odd.

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