The 1960s: Maps for Curious Minds

The trajectory of the Apollo 11 moon landing, the grim route of President Kennedy’s Dallas motorcade, and the locations of influential music festivals like Woodstock and Yugoslavia’s Parada ritma, the first rock festival held in a communist country, are just some of the maps included in this vivid cartographic overview of the 1960s from former bookseller Kerr (A Short History of the Victorian Era). The collection aims to encompass the decade’s contradictions, its “mood of love, peace, and freedom” that flourished alongside wars, assassinations, and political unrest. Thus, colorful maps related to grave events, such as state-by-state casualties of American soldiers in Vietnam and key locations in the Manson Family’s murder spree, are juxtaposed against far sillier subjects, like the proliferation of amusingly titled international versions of “The Twist” (“Monsieur Twister” in Canada; “Hello, Mr. Twist” in Denmark). Gratifying trivia abounds in maps detailing notable places of origin, such as cities where the era’s popular books were written (A Clockwork Orange in Hove, U.K.; Naked Lunch in Tangier, Morocco). But the best maps are intentionally oddball: diamond-related hotspots in Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s notoriously rocky marriage; an assortment of unrelated events occurring on Friday, Oct. 5, 1962 (among them: “President Kennedy has a head cold”). Interspersed with bright but strangely static figures drawn by illustrator Rollet, it’s a weird and winsome trip. (Oct.)