William Vollmann - The Atlas

"An Old Man in Old Grayish Kamiks" was first presented (in abridged form) in 1994 in a BBC radio program entided "Four Corners."

"The Prophet of the Road" first appeared in The Los Angeles Times Magazine in 1992.

The San Diego section of "Houses" first appeared in Larry McCaftery's anthology Avant-Pop: Fiction for a Daydream Nation [Boulder: Black Ice Books (Fiction Collective Two), 1993).

"Under the Grass" first appeared in 1994 in Grand Street , minus the final "Roma" section which they did not care for.

"The Best Way to Smoke Crack" first appeared in a Japanese translation in the magazine Subaru .

The "Traveller's Epitaph" in "The Atlas" first appeared in Zyzzyva.

"Red and Blue" first appeared in Spin in 1994 in a slightly abbreviated form.

"The Best Way-to Drink Beer" first appeared in Esquire in 1994 under their title, "How to Drink Beer."

The first paragraph of "Resolute Bay, Cornwallis Island, Canada (1991)" in "Incarnations of the Murderer" was originally a part of a BBC radio program I presented entitled "Are You Spies from Greenpeace?" (January 1992). "Incarnations of the Murderer" as a whole first appeared in the electronic anthology Post-Modem Culture . The version herein has been revised and expanded.

"Outside and Inside" first appeared in a shorter version in Conjunctions .

"The Rifles" was first published in Grand Street.

"Last Day at the Bakery" first appeared in Story magazine in 1994.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Reed International Books for permission to reproduce the following from Philips' International Atlas: A Series of 160 Pages of Coloured Maps and Plans Forming a Complete Geographical Survey of the International Relationships of the New Era , Its Territorial Changes and Commercial Communications, Third Edition, edited by George Philip, F.R.G.S., George Philip & Son, Ltd, The London Geographical Institute, 1937: Rainfall, Isobars and Winds; Flags of All Nations; and North Polar Regions — South Polar Regions.

Photographs by the author.