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Rating: 
Summary: The Ultimate Addition to your National Geographic Library
Review: A National Geographic Book that puts it all together. I have read many college level geography textbooks, and this book has all the information in a much more readable form. The maps and diagrams in this book are great, but if you are looking for a National Geographic Picture Book, buy something else. I have enjoyed reading through this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Too often just "Bad Geography"!
Review: As a long standing member of the NGS I was frankly shocked at the poor quality of the information in this book. One would hope for accuracy from an organisation which claims to be promoting improved understanding of geography - but this book is riddled with unacceptable errors. Here are a few!
a. Page 660 "Gibraltar, an island in the Strait of Gibraltar". Really?
b. Page 442. Apparently Chongqing, several thousand kilometers inland on the Yangtse, is at risk from a tsunami (whereas China's seaboard cities are not!
c. Page 625. I am expected to believe that little Sao Tome (population around 150000) had 5 million visitors in 1994 - but that these only spent US$2 million (40c each!)
d. Pages 12/13. The NGS has always apparently been totally incapable of understanding the difference between "United Kingdom", "Britain" and "England"/"Scotland" etc. Similarly with the nationalities involved. Thus, totally randomly, in this section explorers are shown as coming from, inter alia "England", "Scotland", "Britain". Why for instance are Speke/Grant from "Britain" whilst Samuel and Florence Baker are from "England". Shackleton is shown as coming from "England" when he was in fact Anglo Irish. etc etc!
e. Page 457. The UK territory of St Helena is not mentioned in the "Dependencies list" - nor Tristan Da Cunha
f. Page 306. Why is Bhutan shown in this map as "Hindu". Whilst it has a Hindu minority one of the most noteworthy aspects of Bhutanese culture is its adherence to Buddhism.
You might think that these are "nit picking" criticisms across c700pp. Ok if you don't mind a "Reference book" which might get things wrong then buy it!
Rating: 
Summary: National Geo Could do Better
Review: I was disappointed. Perhaps I expected better -- a lot better -- from National Geographic. Perhaps I was looking for something this book is not. Whatever the reason, this is not a book that I will go back to again and again, which is what I expect from something called "a desk reference."Most of the book is a description of how the earth was formed, the continents, etc. Well done, as such things always are in National Geo publications. But not something the average person would go back to again to find some fact or piece of information. In several sections, e.g. the one on population, they were just too politically correct by describing the theories of both Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon. They debated whether population growth was good or bad and the section on migration did not use the "I" word, at least I didn't see any mention of the impact of immigration on the US. Our Census Bureau projects that our 275 million population will double to over half a billion by the middle of this coming century with half of that increase a result of immigration since 1970. But National Geographic doesn't seem to consider facts like that worth including in a desk reference. What I wanted was a lot of detailed information on every country in the world plus comparative tables that rank them by per capita wealth, etc. What they offered in that category could be found in a good encyclopedia. Keep looking. There will be other books that do it better.
Rating: 
Summary: If this is what you want, then this is it.
Review: True, if you are looking for detail factoids about each country in the world (per complaint in prior review) then this is not the best product out there, I'd go to Countries of the World and Their Leaders Yearbook or Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations or the online CIA World Factbook. Instead, this is more an encyclopedia of the discipline of geography, from Eratosthenes to the European Union. The first three sections, "What is Geography?", "Physical Geography", and "Human Geography" cover theories and processes like a mini textbook. Consider it a grown-up version of Kenneth Davis' Don't Know Much About Geography. Only the last section contains information about individual countries, covering each nation's physical geography, government, economy, culture, etc. Being more of a human or social geographer, I find the sections on physical geography topics to be very handy on such topics as plate tectonics, soils, and groundwater. Why only 4 stars? Like many 'desk references' it has perhaps an identity crisis. Is it a dictionary? An encyclopedia? A directory or a textbook? A little of all rolled into one.
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