At first glance, Imus’ “The Essential Geography of the United States of America” may look like any other U.S. wall map. It’s about 4 feet by 3 feet. It uses a standard, two-dimensional ...

The first map provides an overview of travel spending in the US. Taller, orange spikes show counties where households spent more money on travel while. Counties with shorter teal spikes spend less.

This may seem unbelievable, but in the course of creating this map, I filled my house with 1,001 books. Some are from the 19th century, with cloth bindings; some were published last month.