The New Atlas of World History: Global Events at a Glance (Historical Atlas) [Hardcover]

This book attempts quite a bold brief: 'Global Events at a Glance'. And in many ways it achieves that goal quite effectively. Essentially a combination of pages of illustrated timelines interleaved with the 54 global maps positioned chronologically within the text, the book makes an interesting browse. The maps show types of human subsistence, technological development, migrations, trade patterns, empires and dominions, religious and political affiliations, alliances etc and flicking through one can easily see the ebb and flow of political power and other elements in human cultures. The running world population graph at the bottom of selected timeline pages is fascinating (estimated population falling significantly post Black Death ravages, for example) and biggest 5 cities chart which accompanies each of the maps immediately illustrates our Euro, and then western-centric attitudes. Eastern cities which I often haven't heard of dominate for centuries. There are also two pages of reference maps at the end showing key cities and with 5 inset enlarged views. There is an A-Z of Peoples and Nations and substantial index.

The timelines are divided into 4 bands: Politics and Economy; Religion and Philosophy; Science and Technology; Arts and Architecture: these seem to be colour-coded to link with the map which precedes the timeline. There is a mass of information: for example, in Religion and Philosophy between 1600 and 1610 I can quickly see significant events occured in China, Japan, the Mughal empire and Macassar, though I struggle to see where Macassar is shown on the map, or how the colour used ties in with the information, unless the colour is decorative, in which case it is really confusing. The information, more particularly any related image, is not always clearly positioned on the these pages: it took me some time to find the confirmation that what I presumed was Stonehenge actually IS Stonehenge on pp28-9.

Clarity is, I would suggest, the central problem with this book. The colour key used to delineate the various features each map might be focusing on is not always sufficiently differentiated to be clear. The same is true of the attempts to itemise smaller areas by using coloured and numbered shield-like shapes: the keys for these are not uniformly positioned and can be clumsy to access. The author has decided, for good reason, to use global maps only, but that can lead to a specific region in a specific era when a lot was happening, seeming to be very jumbled and squeezed. Perhaps the European scramble for African colonies, say, deserved a bigger, more focused map, though at a loss of other advantages. I also feel that at least once, there should be a global map which shows a more realistic representation of the various land masses. The UK is as big as Spain throughout in this projection used: that's necessary for clarity of information, but just once let's be shown how it really is.

The book is beautifully produced, as one would expect from Thames and Hudson, but I'm not at all sure how useful I would find this as a reference tool. If I wanted to know about the Sumerians, would this tell me much that I couldn't access in greater detail quite easily elsewhere? Probably not. But the purpose of this book, I suppose is to map the flux of civilisation(s) over time, and this book certainly gives a vivid sense of that process and makes for a very interesting browse. What it might well do is prompt taking insights further by doing other research elsewhere, and it is perhaps unreasonable to expect too much more of a book with the ambitions this has within the constraints of size and cost.

The New Atlas of World History presents its information using maps, text, timelines and graphics. There are 49 chronologically organized political maps. Once the reader has digested the map and its introductory text, they are encouraged to turn the page and study a two-page timeline per era which gives information on specific events and developments in the world's cultural evolution.

The central idea behind this book is that the global trajectory of history is too often obscured by the increasing specialization of modern scholarship. We might know about the French Revolution, but how much can we understand it unless we study the years leading up to it? You can use this book to understand the context of historical events. I'm using a similar approach when teaching my children history using the excellent The Story of the World: Ancient Times v. 1: History for the Classical Child (Story of the World: History for the Classical Child) series of books. The New Atlas of World History is a useful supplementary volume. Borders change so often the maps in this book are invaluable when helping my children visualise where the countries are.

While the introductory text to each era benefits from being concise, it isn't the most accessible writing for an armchair historian. It might work well for adults who want to revise an era with which they were already familiar. The complexity of the language means it isn't suitable for children.

My main criticism of this book is the editorial decision to colour code the date markers and images. These are colour coded according to the region to which they refer. Unfortunately, this leads to a Bayeux tapestry tinted blue, giving it the appearance of being under water. The Rosetta Stone looks like it has been dipped in Tango. You get the idea.

The New Atlas of World History also features a helpful Contents page, an A to Z of Peoples, Nations and Cultures, Further Reading and Sources of Data.

A good book that endeavours to encapsulate world history and significant world events from the pre-ice age 6 million years ago (yep, the world is more than 5 thousand years old!) to the present day (2010)
The format of the book is that the world map is laid bare over two pages with countries/continents colour coded according to various criteria eg European colonialism, migrating populations etc. This is followed by a two page timeline which details significant events in the years preceeding and following the year presented in the world map overview with text and illustrations.
Both the world map pages and timeline incorporate a left hand side synopsis column explaining the events as shown.
Obviously the point of the book was to have an entire world map on display for each year depicted but I personally prefer the format utilised by other guides whereby just the pivotal countries are focused upon. I thought the inclusion of the whole globe each time was a bit distracting and took up unneccessary space from regions directly impacted upon having the rest of the unaffected globe presented decade after decade largely unchanged. Sometimes things seemed a bit crammed in due to limitations on space.
I also thought the format of the two page timeline was quite confusing, the colours, years, interplaced sentences gave me quite a headache trying to focus upon it. It has at first glimpse a disorganised random feel to it (it's not) and I felt it could have been laid out asthetically much more pleasing to the eye.
What it presents on a global sense it presents very well though and it also has a nice index including a good section on 'Peoples, Nations and Cultures; it was all just a little bit too over encompassing and generalist compared to other similar books for me.