Description:
Europe's internal boundaries have changed greatly over the years, impacted by shifts in population, religion, and dominant despots; the History Atlas of Europe, by Ian Barnes and Robert Hudson, provides an easy way to grasp those national transformations. It's part of a series from Macmillan that also includes atlases for Africa, Asia, and South America, and while it has a text that's lucid, learned, and engaging, it's the maps that excel. The "Earliest People" map, with its settlements of Australopithecus, Neanderthal, and modern man of the late Upper Pleistocene, makes graphic sense of excavation sites like Lascaux and Szeleta. Other maps show the spread of agriculture (7000-2000 B.C.), early Greece, the span of the Hallstatt Celtic culture, Imperial Rome, the Russian Revolution, and European trade ties circa 1300. There's also a thought-provoking illustration showing where displaced peoples went in postwar Europe, providing relevant data for discussion of contemporary ethnic conflicts. --Stephanie Gold
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