McAtlas: A Global Guide to the Golden Arches (Revised Edition 2026)
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For a limited time we have copies signed by Gary He.
The first edition of McAtlas won two James Beard Awards for its documentation of over 100 regional McDonald's dishes found nowhere near a U.S. drive-thru. This revised and expanded edition adds 20% more of them, bringing the total to 500 pages covering the strangest, most specific version of globalization you'll find anywhere.
Gary He spent years visiting McDonald's locations most of us will never see: on Norwegian fjords, in Filipino shopping malls, at Route 66 pit stops frozen in amber since the Eisenhower administration. The result is equal parts field guide and cultural history, and it treats the Golden Arches with the same rigor most books reserve for cathedrals or capital cities.
The premise sounds a bit grand until you're several pages in: McDonald's didn't conquer the world by exporting a single menu. It won by disappearing into more than 100 local cuisines, one region at a time. A McSpaghetti in Manila, a McArabia in Riyadh, a Teriyaki McBurger in Tokyo, a Kiwiburger in Auckland. Each dish He documents is a small case study in what a company will do to keep selling food on six continents, and what a place will do to make room for one more fast food chain.
He brings a photojournalist's eye to buildings most people drive past without a second look. Some locations are architectural landmarks in their own right, like the UFO-shaped McDonald's still standing in Roswell, New Mexico. Others are just a counter and a menu board, distinguished only by what's on it. Two hundred photographs and addresses for locations across six continents make this both a coffee-table object and something close to a travel guide, for anyone curious enough to go looking.
Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.
