2006-11-27 The title is misleading

Looking for an atlas of WORLD HISTORY, I was attracted to this title.

It's maps are excellent. The religious, military, political and economic detail of Europe and the Mediterranean Basin in pre-history, antiquity, the middle ages and through to the French Revolution are indeed fantastic, as is the history which is mostly presented as a timeline within each issue. My only possible complaint is that the book itself is small and the maps need a keen eye.

However, there are very few maps on the rest of the world. China, the Middle East, Africa, the New World - there are very few maps, and many are about Europe's interaction and intervention in these regions.

In a word: Eurocentric. No doubt it was initially put together in the days when Europe was indeed thought to be the world - before the 1980s. It would deserve 5 stars if the title was 'The Penguin Atlas of European History'. Instead, for world history, why not try the Cassell's Atlas of World History by John Haywood: larger, and an actual world history, though contains less detail in its text.