National Geographic African Adventure Atlas

Rating:
Summary: A missed opportunity
Review: This atlas fills a void in the geography and travel reference world. While it does cover a lot of ground, there is much that is missing. Regardless of what the folks at National Geographic intended, the buyers of this book are expecting an atlas. But this is an atlas that does not even have a decent political map of the whole continent. There is no physical map, no information at all about languages, religions, ethnic groups, population density, climate, vegetation, natural hazards or even wildlife. So what is in this atlas? There are maps covering all of Africa, maps of major cities, and maps of areas with high concentrations of national parks. There is plenty of ecotourism information and nice pictures. The maps though leave much to be desired. They basically show roads, towns and parks on a whitish background with very faint relief shading. There is no attempt to portray the nature of the landscape or the topography in any meaningful way (are we in a desert or in a jungle?), they completely forgot about railroads, and in this day of GPS navigation there is no latitude/longitude reference grid. All in all rather disapointing. Hopefully the next editon will make up for some of these shortcomings. Unfortunately it will probably be several years.