North America: A Fold-Out Graphic History

The histories of Canada, the United States (with the exception of Hawaii) and Mexico are intertwined in this fold-out graphic history book. Its size alone – eight feet when fully extended – makes the book unwieldy and probably unsuitable in a classroom or library situation where the book would not stand up to constant use. Covering the years from 13,000 BCE to 1695 CE on one side of the “page” and from 1718 to 2019 CE on the other, the entries include events, exploration, agriculture, wars, inventions, cultural practices and the rise and fall of civilizations. The difficulty of trying to encapsulate 15,000 years of history into less than 200 captions is in the selection of entries, and some important events are bound to be missed while others, though interesting, could have been eliminated. (Two such examples are that head shaping of Mayan babies was popular from 250-900 CE and that, without garbage collectors in colonial times, people allowed their pigs and goats to roam the streets freely, eating garbage.) Events are not arranged in the linear pattern of a typical timeline. Rather, the dates are all over the page, and some dates are even repeated elsewhere on the page. Each date and event is written in bold font with a short accompanying paragraph beneath. Font size, for obvious reasons, is extremely small.

Illustrations consist of cartoon-like drawings and some maps which indicate the acquisition of land areas by various countries at different times in history. An editor’s note states that the artist has divided the continent into four regions, each with its own colour scheme, but this is likely to be lost on the reader. The colour palette is comprised of muted shades of green, blue, terra cotta, peach and gray, but the colours are drab and boring and do not complement the liveliness of the illustrations.

With so much information to impart, the book is crowded, and one’s eyes tend to dart around the page, wondering where to start. Near the back of the book is a map of North America as it looks today with all of the provinces, territories and states, and a list of the top 10 independent North American countries by land area and population. (Canada ranks first in land area and third in population.) A glossary and an index are included.

An impressive feat and well-researched, North America: A Fold-Out Graphic History might appeal to some, but the fold-out format has its limitations.