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	• Oxford Atlas of the World, 14th Edition Oxford University Press, USA, 2007 - 476 pages average customer review:based on 58 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

I also own the latest edition of the National Geographic atlas and the 2000 edition of the largest Hammond World Atlas. While the latter have their strong points, I'd rate the 11th edition Oxford as the best general-purpose world atlas, and the Amazon price is certainly right. I ordered mine "next day air" to minimize shipping damage but its good packing would probably have kept it safe even via UPS ground. However, I still recommend 1 or 2-day shipping for buyers particular about book condition--- this is a very large, heavy book!

Besides the excellent main map section, the Oxford has an extensive introductory section with all types of specialized maps and related data. Furthermore, the atlas's index is well-organized and extensive. The maps themselves are unusually legible and don't require squinting to find towns, rivers, etc. The book is an invaluable reference and also a work of art. A "must buy" as far as I'm concerned!

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WONDERFUL VALUE

This wonderful atlas is a joy to read, re-read and keep as a family reference resource. The pages are very well laid out, the maps are easy to read, the colors are vivid. The amazingly vast amount of information about planet earth and space contained within its pages is extremely easy to locate. The glossary section is comprehensive and detailed. The 10th edition has upto date information as compared to most other atlases. Since so many borders have changed in the past ten years, I believe this book is an absolute MUST for anyone who has some interest in other parts of the world. I cannot think of a better use for the amount I paid to buy this book and I will recommend it whole-heartedly to students, teachers, writers etc. In comparison with other atlases like National Geographic, Hammond or DK, in my opinion, this book will give you the biggest bang for the buck!

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Ultimately disappointing

At first glance this is a beautiful, almost spectacular, book. Lots of color, dramatic aerial photos of the earth, and a large section devoted to topics ranging from the earth's history to modern population shifts.
But as a reference book it falls short. There are a lot of maps, but there is really less there than meets the first look: a lot of space is taken up with a narrowing down of detail - one map shows the hemisphere, then another an area of the hemisphere, then another a detail, of sorts, of the area. And often a detail of the detail. The cost to the reader is a lot of redundancy, and that very few countries get a full, detailed, page of their own. And many of the larger maps, especially, are quietly inaccurate. Towns are shown in the wrong places, major towns are missing at the expense of smaller ones. For a representative example: on map number 147, Statesboro, Georgia, which is 23 miles north of the I-16 expressway, is shown south of it; one of the largest cities in the hundred miles north of Atlanta, Marietta, is not there at all, but Roswell, 13 miles away, is shown at Marietta's location. Similar problems abound in other places.
As a geographical reference it lacks any claim to completeness: hundreds of towns that are shown and indexed in my forty year old Encyclopedia Britannica World Atlas are not in the new Oxford at all. There are over 84,000 listings in the old Britannica, Oxford claims 75,000, but quite a few are duplicates, because the same city appears on several of the various sized maps. Elkhart, Grapeland, Latexo, and scores and scores of other Texas towns that made it into the Britannica forty years when they were much smaller, are nowhere to be found in the new Oxford. They may be comparatively small towns, but a good atlas should show such things: I don't need an expensive coffee table book to find Dallas three times. And even when a town makes it, it gets short shrift: the Britannica index told us the county, state, and population of Creede, Colorado; the Oxford lists it merely as Creede, U.S.A.
Unfortunately, the Britannica appears to be out of print, but if you have one, don't replace it with the splashy Oxford, even tho it does have pretty pictures of the earth from outer space.

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