MacMillan Centennial Atlas of the World [With CDROM]

"Impressive" is an understatement for this book. Macmillan uses the world renowned uniform-scale database of Bertelsmann (Germany) for their Centennial world atlas. This revised edition is updated with major political alterations, such as the new Canadian province of Nunavut. It is mainly a reference atlas, with a relatively small thematic section. The world is presented in 224 pages of scale 1:4,000,000 maps. Although this first serves as an eye opener in realizing that Europe is much smaller that most of us always thought, after a while the disadvantage of this choice becomes clear: more densely populated areas result in overly cluttered maps while other areas such as Siberia result in a series of very empty maps. Nice for a change, but not always useful in the end. Fortunately this is compensated by the visual design of the maps themselves, which is absolutely stunning. The relief shading is one of the finest around (although still not computed from satellite images and therefore slightly incorrect at times), and the coloring of the land is done according to land cover (e.g, desert is pale yellow, even if located on low lying land). Although this seems logical, most atlases use land height for coloring, even those that also use shaded relief. The Bertelsmann maps are one of the very few who manage to combine both land cover and land elevation. Another major feature in this atlas is the inclusion of metric distances between all towns and cities. The atlas is unique in offering this feature! This would be ideal for world travellers, if the atlas would not be so heavy. Its weight of over four kilograms doesn't make it an attractive backpack companion. Similarly, due to the poor representation of economically developed areas, business people may be disappointed as well. But for those who are interested in regions that are usually neglected in all other atlases, e.g., the economically less developed parts of the world, there simply is no better alternative. The combined use of beautiful subtle colors and clear fonts make the maps among the most legible available, although Europe becomes somewhat cluttered. Another special feature in this atlas is its inclusion of an enormous number of places of interest, including all United Nations World Heritage sites, most National Parks, but also archeological ruins, caves, and more.Since the Atlas is targeted to a U.S. public, a separate section has been added, showing the U.S. at a scale of 1:2,000,000, but it does not really add twice as much information to the world maps at 1:4M. Luckily, the 30 splendid world city maps and nice statistics section more than compensate for this. The index gazetteer contains some 104,000 names which is slightly disappointing for its large size: many competitors of this size reach over 130,000. The difference even becomes larger because the maps especially focus on less developed areas, which reflects in the index. The thematic section may be small but contains a range of trul

As a fancier of atlases, this is the best atlas involving the most modern digital technology.The maps themselves are mediocre compared to the Times Atlas of the World.