I think layer cake is an interesting experiment in mapping events both spatially and temporally in the same visualization. Using a map/GIS is very helpful to understand where events took place, and the route he traveled. However, adding the third dimension didn’t really help me understand the journey, but instead made the visualization less clear, because of the ambiguity 3D->2D flattening adds. It also didn’t help that text was sometimes obscured by other text, that I was a bit confused by the amount of data suddenly shoved in my face before I had even managed to figure out what it was all about.