Historical Atlas of the Ancient World 4,000,000 - 500 BC

Any of the historical atlases by John Haywood is excellent. They combine readable text with great illustrative maps. The combination makes history easier to understand and remember. This atlas covers the time of human origins to 500 BC. Those of you familiar with Haywood's Atlas of World History should note that this atlas contains all of the material as the ancient world section of that comprehensive, one-volume atlas plus about fifty percent more. The only problem is that all of Haywood's atlases seem to be out of print.

This is another fine history book and atlas by Dr. Haywood, whose historical atlases are some of the best out there for readability, ease of use, and price. I have his Atlas of World History, and it's excellent as well. This one seems to be a little less technical than that one, but both are very readable and not dry like your typical historical atlas. I practically collect these things and have 7 or 8 of the major ones, and as I said, Haywood's are often the most readable and often the best value in terms of price. Haywood has his usual nice touch with the material and he pays more attention to skillfully integrating graphics and illustrations with the text. In fact, his Atlas of World History used a team of graphics experts which worked specifically on that aspect of the book, and it shows compared to the other atlases on the market. I assume the nice layout and design on this book means the same approach was used here. The only other major historical atlas that competes with Haywood's in terms of visual design is the big Dorling-Kindersley one, which, although great, is four or five times the price of this one.This book contains two-page spreads covering the historical periods from prehistoric times up to 500 B.C. The maps are well done and not too busy like the ones in some atlases, where they're so dense with symbols and other junk that you can hardly read the map. This book and the Atlas of World History overlap somewhat as this volume contains all of the material on the ancient world in that volume, but since it's specifically devoted to the ancient world, there is quite a bit more additional material as well. Overall, another fine history offering from Prof. Haywood.

I have started reading a lot of historical fiction and nonfiction, and have found Haywood's Altas to be very useful. It works well as an introduction, being quite readable and succinct. In addition, it is an excellent reference to use when reading nonfiction tombs that presume we all know where all the Hittites came from, or how the Illyrians migrated to Italy. Just easily finding Zhou, or Thrace on a map has been a big help for me. A good atlas, well worth the reasonably price.