Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

It's impossible to understand the favourable reviews of this product. First impression: all the pages were stuck together. They had to be carefully separated, pair by pair, trying not to tear the thin paper over the spiral binding. Then when I started trying to use the maps, I was astonished to find that where a map was split across two pages - most maps - there was just an arbitrary break. Words are split, even, unbelievably, letters. You'll find one half (or quarter) of the letter "t" on the left hand page and the remainder an inch away on the right hand page. Perhaps users expect no better now, but I went back to an old (1996) Gousha road atlas and confirmed my recollection that, by human intervention, every page break was carefully arranged so that words were not split. That's not all. Many states require two or more double-page spreads. Fine - that's the point of a large format. But there's no overlap. So for example Northeastern Pennsylvania takes a double-page spread on pages 178-179, and Southeastern Pennsylvania is on pages 180-181. Anyone who's actually used a map for driving knows that when there's a town at the bottom of one page, you should be able to find it at the top of the next page. That's how you orient yourself. Not with this road atlas. It's on one or the other, bot both. It's as if someone laid out a huge map of the US on the floor, cut it into pieces for each state, and slapped the pieces into a book. If you think about it, the art of map publishing involves a lot more than that. Incidentally, Pennsylvania takes three double-page spreads. Other reviewer have commented on how difficult the size makes the maps to use, but that perhaps depends on the type of use and personal preference. I think it's certainly true that the atlas is of very little use for planning a trip that covers any considerable distance, even within a single state. And be careful that you know what you're getting. If you want Canada and Mexico, it's easy to purchase the US-only version by mistake. I am afraid I am deeply suspicious of reviews that claim they found this publication excellent, or even halfway decent. Now to try to find a decent piece of modern map publishing.