Rand McNally World Atlas [Paperback]

I'm surprised by other users' lukewarm--or even severely negative--reviews for this atlas, as I find it detailed, easily organized, and colorful. I also think it's a great value for the price; as large as the hardback is (more than 140 pages), it's only $24.95.

The atlas starts with a contents page, which lists countries and regions by continent. (This page can be viewed on Amazon). If this isn't sufficient, there's also an eighty-page index in the back that contains more than 45,000 entries. They're in alphabetical order, of course, with the map references and page numbers accompanying them. Combining the contents page and index, and considering the maps are in alphabetical order within their continent groupings, I don't see how organization in this atlas is a problem.
Following the contents page are a couple pages explaining how to read maps and atlases, and how this particular atlas works. There's then an introductory section dedicating a page to each continent. Each page has colorful photographs and text describing the continent's people, wildlife, landscapes, and history. Accompanying the text are fact boxes with such statistics as land area, population, most populous city, and longest river.
Next comes a page featuring pie graphs showing how Earth's land, energy, population, and population growth is divided among the continents. The page opposite it serves as an index map and legend for the entire atlas. A political and physical world map are the last pages before the maps begin.
Though people may differ in their opinion, Rand McNally boasts its maps are "very user-friendly, with a clean, uncluttered look, easy-to-read type, and attractive colors." Supplementing the maps are "hypsometric and bathymetric color tints illustrating land elevations and water depths; shaded relief depicting mountains, valleys, and other landforms; and a locator map showing regional context."
Perhaps what makes this atlas most unique are its individual maps of the fifty U.S. states and ten Canadian provinces. They include inset maps of major cities, county boundaries, shaded relief to show landforms, and more.
I do wish it had some astronomical information like the Oxford New Concise World Atlas does...this would be the only area in which I see it lacking.

Maybe some users feel there are better atlases out there, but there's certainly nothing wrong with this one! It's a good value and pleasant to look at, and has everything a world--and state and province--atlas should, and even a little bit more.

My daughter needed a world atlas for 5th grade. This is a very detailed atlas, but it was not organized in a way that was easy for my daughter to do her homework, which was much more basic. For example, she needed to know the capital of Missouri. The page for the state of Missouri showed pretty much every single city in that state. The capital city had no indicator, and the text was smaller than other city names, to indicate the size of the city. I'd recommend this atlas for an older student, not elementary or middle school.

This isn't the most complete and authoritative atlas around, but it's a lot better than our old completely out of date one, and it's manageable, both pricewise and sizewise.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 9 reviews  3.7 out of 5 stars