See the USA: The Art of the American Travel Brochure

Have you ever seen a travel advertisement that truly made you want to pick up and go? Perhaps it was a shot of the Grand Canyon at sunset or the majestic, snow-capped Rocky Mountains. The selling of America through glossy travel brochures is a multimillion-dollar business, but its heyday was in the 1920s and '30s, when tourist boards hired graphic illustrators to dream up splashy Technicolor characters and copywriters came up with hokey slogans to sell their state. If you're intrigued by commercial design and have a healthy case of wanderlust, you'll enjoy See the USA: The Art of the American Travel Brochure, written by pop-culture specialist John Margolies and designed by Eric Baker. Pore over 200 examples of earnest and often unintentionally humorous travel literature that inspired countless Americans to hop aboard trains or into their Model Ts. A 1918 brochure touting Boston reads, "You don't know beans till you've 'Bean' to Boston!" A 1939 ad for Las Vegas features a straw-chewing cowboy in a four-gallon hat and checked shirt holding a "Howdy, Podner! Come on Out Just for Fun" sign. While advertising has come a long way (you'll no longer see tomahawk-wielding Indians selling the Adirondacks), certain elements somehow remain the same (those bikini-clad, smiling women imploring you to come on down to their eternal beach paradise). --Jill Fergus