Anchor Atlas of World History, Volume II

This little gem never left my side throughout my undergrad and post-grad years. I just bought a copy for my daughter, who is in high school. Even with smart phones being ubiquitous, this resource remains invaluable. It is the perfect companion to any text book and/or lecture. Highly recommend.

This entire series is superb and is absolutely essential for any lover of historical atlases. I have been an owner of virtually all of them for at ten years and I can honestly say that they are most read books of all that I own. The reason is their unique portability and scope. Most historical atlas are huge, heavy and expensive. They are difficult to read unless you are sitting at a table and very difficult to carry. This limits their utility (even though I still love them). Most history books have lots of dense detail about one nation or one period. Virtually none cover the broad sweep of an entire region over centuries. While the Colin McEvedy line of Penguin Historical Atlases (which I highly recommend) is more map oriented, the Kinder/Hilgemann line is much more text oriented. It starts in the late 18th Century and ends just after the Cold War. As its title suggests, it literally covers the entire world, although it is heavily biased towards Europe. In an effort to cover everything, the authors makes frequent use of abbreviations and symbols. This is a little annoying, but you get used to it. Like all Penguin Historical Atlases, it is small, light, reasonably priced and incredibly broad in scope. These atlases offer a unique perspective on history than is otherwise impossible to achieve. Their size and weight make them perfect for travelling. Whenever I go on a trip, I take the most relevant ones with me. That way I can brush up on my history of the region. What is most fun for me is to trace the history or one nation, province or sub-region through the entire atlas. In just a few minutes I can learn as much as spending days reading an entire book. You can also see how individual nations interact with each other, a subject often left out of typical history books.

This is one of the best histroical atlas available, given its compact size for quick desktop reference. Despite the small size, the maps and diagrams are carefully prepared to convey a lot of relevant information. Together with the text, this provides both an outline (in choronlogical order) as well as quite a lot of details on what has happened around the world. Very impressed, since I bought an earlier edition 17 years ago.

This book really does cover nearly all events that have taken place in this period of history, But it is written in the shortest form possible. I really recommend this book as well as its second edition to anyone who truly loves history.

This has been my bible ever since I bought it 15 or so years ago. For the sheer information to weight ratio this is the densest and most useful book I have ever seen. Every single page is a high colour, quality map on one side with extremely concise notes on the other side. Massively indexed. Quite different, and I think considerably better, than the books I have just bought in Penguin's new series. Although the new ones are a bit more user friendly and less intimidating for the general reader, I suppose.