Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding supplamental Tolkien
Review: Fonstad's Atlas might add to any reader's voyage into Middle-Earth, but I cannot recommend it highly enough for readers of The Silmarillon. Her maps and text summaries are excellent and easy to read. They greatly aided in my understanding and specific visualization of events and obviously, geography. I cannot recommend this excellent book highly enough. It may not be cannonized Tolkien, but I am confident every reader will find it enriching and helpful.
Rating: 
Summary: Terribly Disappointing
Review: I ordered this book based on not only my love of the Tolkien Universe but on the recommendations of those who have seen it. I am very disappointed with the book. The drawings and text bring nothing of the flavor of Tolkien's World to the page and serve only to remove the beauty of his language from the stories. As a research tool, this book is useless and as a hobbyist's edition, it is not worth the paper it iss printed on. If you are looking for a description of Tolkien's world, head to The History of Middle-Earth as edited by Christopher Tolkien. These provide as much information as the atlas does, and in a way that makes it much more interesting and keeps the imagination alive.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting but not essential
Review: There are a lot of nice things about this book, but it has a number of disappointing flaws. There are quite a few geographical questions that were left unanswered for me (my primary reason for buying it) and the graphics make the information a little hard to glean. There are certainly some maps I enjoyed, but (perhaps because every serious fan has their own pet interests) I did not feel the author capitalized on the opportunity the concept of the book represents.
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Summary: An invaluable resource for hobbits. . .
Review: . . .and Big People alike.Many hobbits are fond of maps, even those who are not fond of adventures. This wonderful book of maps by one of the few Big People to visit Middle-Earth is invaluable for those hobbits (like myself) who like books of things they already know, set down fair and square with no contradictions. No hobbit, upon acquiring this book, has any excuse for getting lost anywhere in the Four Farthings, or on the Road to Bree. Beyond that, I would still recommend a Ranger for a guide. After the return of the Travellers, hobbits in general became more interested in the Wide World. This volume is useful in that it describes, in terms familiar to hobbits, those lands through which the Travellers adventured. It certainly puts things in perspective. A book to enjoy in the evening with one's pipe and a pint of beer.
Rating: 
Summary: Well, there is currently nothing better...
Review: Every time someone mentions Fonstad's atlas to me I start to warn them about the numerous errors in the book. "Numerous errors? Can you provide a list?" I am asked. I don't have a complete list. There are so many errors that compiling a list becomes fatiguing. So let me begin by pointing out what I like about the book, and why I would recommend that people buy it. Then I'll conclude with a partial list of the problems. First of all, the cartographic style is a nice mixture of fantasy artwork and commercial mapping techniques. One gets the sense that Fonstad put some time into studying this imaginary geography. And though many of the features are described in text, Tolkien himself didn't provide many maps to work from. As interpretations go, this atlas could have been much worse. I also like the use of screens to imply the general size of political domains, regions of influence, and distributions of languages and peoples. The liberal use of arrows and guidelines to indicate movements of peoples and armies also helps tremendously. And the many 3-D perspectives help to bring the geography to life. So, what's wrong with the book? One of the more serious problems is Fonstad's tendency to mix material from different periods of Tolkien's life. "Middle-earth", the world of The Lord of the Rings, did not exist until Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings. So one of Fonstad's worst errors is her use of The Book of Lost Tales for documenting some of the regions. In fact, as fascinating as Tolkien's early maps of Arda (published in The Shaping of Middle-earth) may be, they have no relevance to The Lord of the Rings. Only one of those maps even uses the name "Middle-earth". So what is a cartographer to do? Fonstad either cannot distinguish between the vastly different worlds which represent separate periods of literary creation in Tolkien's work, or else she has made the unforgivable decision to mislead her readers by implying it's all closely interconnected. The geography of Middle-earth rightly begins with the map of Wilderland in The Hobbit, and from there it expanded outward under Tolkien's hand to gradually include remnants of the old Beleriand geography. She should have conceded that she was introducing a major fudge in her research. In terms of details, Fonstad also gets a lot of things just plain wrong. She managed to shave 100 miles off the width of Eriador. Is that significant? It is if you want to see where Aragorn's people lived. It is also significant to any attempt to calculate the distances covered by Frodo and Bilbo (Fonstad's journey maps are wildly inaccurate because of her error). She has moved Belegost far to the south of where it should be, Rhosgobel is given two separate locations, Numenor is in the wrong location, the boundaries for Dale are wrong, the migration paths for the Easterlings of Beleriand are wrong, the Noldor did not retreat from Angband as she indicates, etc., etc. The list of errors, many of them significant, is simply too long. Is the book worth buying? Well, there is nothing better out there. I wish there were. Tolkien fans deserve better than this. Maybe the new edition will correct the old flaws. I hope so.
Rating:
Summary: Very nice maps!
Review: This is another Tolkien related product.However,it's not garbage. This atlas was full of little pinpoints,mountains,sea level,houses,what happened at the geographic locations,and it has a short summary of what happened during those ages. This is a must have for any Tolkien reader or for any geographer!
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Summary: Geography as it should be done
Review: The Atlas of Middle-Earth is an excellent work of geographic reasoning in the great tradition of Eratostenes. The attention to detail, the realism in the drawings, and the breadth of topics in this book are difficult to measure. I am a professional geographer, and I understand how labor-intensive the completion of this book must have been. Literally thousands of decisions made by Mrs. Fonstad had to fit with Tolkien's descriptions and intentions. That Tolkien's descriptions can stand up to such scrutiny of accuracy and internal consistency is a testament to Tolkien's magic (many authors' designed worlds do not). I also wish to dispell a misconception by an earlier reviewer. The review by Linards Ticmanis from Germany is in error about Mrs. Fonstad's portrayal of the world maps. He suggested that her maps show a world "only half as large as the real earth" and that Tolkien has designed Arda to be Earth (although Tolkien denied that Middle-Earth was Europe in The Lost Road, p. 25). However, the radius of the planet can be calculated from her maps by placing an orthographic projection diagram with lines of latitude and longitude on top of her maps (her world maps are orthographic projections). When a degree of longitude or latitude is compared to its ground distance (supplied by reading Tolkien), it is quite easy to calculate the radius of the planet, approximately 4200 miles (6770 km). This compares to 3963 miles (6378 km) radius for the earth. These two measurements are very similar, and the idea that Mrs. Fonstad's maps show a world that is "only half as large as the real earth" is in error. In any case, the Atlas of Middle-Earth is about as "Tolkien Purist" as you can get; and this adds to its value immensely.
Rating: 
Summary: Just noting two little quirks.
Review: In general I agree with the other reviers so I won't repeat their statements here. I'd just like to note two tiny quirks: The Cover design has the wrong runes (obviously the designers looked up the numbers Tolkien gives in the Appendix of the "Lord of the Rings" in the wrong table) and secondly the earth of the world maps is much too small, only half as large as the real earth, which is strange since Tolkien clearly does not describe another planet but an imaginary past of our own planet. So much for Tolkien purism... otherwise it is great.
Rating:
Summary: MIddle-Earth is big! Don't get lost.
Review: The mythology behind "Middle-earth" invites the reader to enter the mysterious lands of Arda. As I was getting ready to teach the Hobbit and TLOR, I realized that I was getting completely confused abotu the geography of ME, and the routes and the distance between places. That's when I found this book which, although doesn't use state of the art, computer generated images, covers all the points I needed. I truly liked the details of hte movements, and especially the footnotes with the reference to particular chapters. It made my work easier, and it made me appreciate the work of Prof. Tolkien even more. Middle-earth is too big, don't get lost.
Rating:
Summary: A must-have for every Tolkien fan
Review: "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" are only a small story inside the world of the Ring developed by J.R.R. Tolkien over all those years... A world with its own languages, maps, religion and cultures. No wonder it was great time that an atlas of this imaginary world should be published one day. Karen W. Fonstad did a great job. The maps are detailed, giving more information in the shaping of Middle Earth, the politics and history of the continent and the detailed description of the journey of the "Fellowship of the Ring" adds an additional touch of realism. Now we get an idea of what the trip must have been, as a distance, and in what kind of environment... This book offers a great orientation in everyone wanting to know more about Middle-Earth.
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