Atlases: Part 2, Traditional Atlases

Hewes library has many “traditional” Atlases in its collection. These all show a range of information on the many countries and regions of the world ranging from detailed road and topographic maps of the earth to charts explaining the geographic and geologic features of the planet to historical maps illustrating the location of various empires over time.

All of the Atlases detailed in this section have roads and topographic features displayed, but the unusual features of each are described below.

Britannica Atlas has a small section of historical maps, information on major industries, claims made by various countries of navigable waters, and English, German, French, Spanish and Portuguese indexes of any given location. It also has regional and detailed national information of some areas. The maps vary in scale of the maps, some very detailed, some not so detailed.

Collegiate Atlas of the World is published by National Geographic, so it has very good illustrations and maps. The Atlas incorporates satellite images into the different topics covered and uses information from global and national sources such as World Health Organization, U.S. Government and the World Wildlife Fund. In addition to the charts, maps, images, there are nuggets of trivia found in each section.

Hammond 5th Edition World Atlas: It has a good Table of Contents that shows where to find locations. It contains very current data (up to 2008) and has information and statistics on a wide variety of topics. Has a section of satellite images of cities, mountains and coastlines.

Macmillan Centennial Atlas of the World and Planet Earth: Uses satellite images, all maps to the same scale, all major roads shown. These are geographic atlases containing maps and none of the extraneous information. The Centennial Atlas has detailed maps of major cities from Amsterdam to Wash D.C. and the major city maps use the local language to describe features, including Arabic, Chinese and Japanese scripts/characters along with the Western script.

New Century World Atlas: Contains a world flags section in the front and has a good index. This atlas has information on a wide variety of topics including: global relationships of different environments, population, religion, standards of living, literacy, manufacturing and industry, land use and regional mineral resources. It ends with a collection of world statistics.

Oxford Atlas of the World 2005: An atlas that contains information on many different topics including: conflict, energy, travel and tourism, global warming, the stars, planets, world cities, regions and oceans. The text incorporates maps, charts and photos to illustrate the different topics.

Peters Atlas ‘philosophy is that all countries should be displayed as equally important, so the same map scale was used for each. The map section is the first half of the book, each map being 1/60 of the world’s surface. The second half displays charts and maps on different themes primarily geographic features, but also contains other information like climates, volcanoes, hurricane/typhoon prone regions, languages, education, etc. It also has charts of intangibles like “inequality”, “social order” and the “status of women” (mostly derived from United Nations Data, but in some cases they made their own estimates of information)

Times Atlas of the World: This old 1959 atlas is before the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. into Russia and other states and the establishment of many of the current African States, so is a good reference to use if you are looking to see what places were named and what they looked like 50 years ago. It contains other interesting information such as the world’s surface routes (roads, railways) and major air routes of the time.

Atlas Mundial: Spanish language world atlas 1998.

A curiosity in this collection is an Italian automobile club atlas of the world from the 1950s.