The Collegeville Atlas of the Bible

Rating:
Summary: The crease kills it
Review: Like many other atlases of biblical times, this atlas is filled with colorful images, drawings and maps. In particular, this book is more than just an atlas, but a visual guide to the location and lifestyle of the biblical lands. Many of the visual insets are well reporduced and nicely described. The text is easy to read, informed by recent scholarly opinion, and is approached from a secular standpoint.

The main complaint with the book is its layout of images of cities and area maps across two pages. While the larger size of the maps and images of cities and temples is appreciated, the hardcover binding of the book really distorts the images. For example, about 2 inches of the map on page 59 of the Assyrian Empire is pushed leftwards on to page 58, and to the right of the map is a two inch column depicting a tribute obelisk. While removing this small image and description and placing it on page 58, leaving 59 free to contain the entire map, might make the book's page layout less exciting, at least the map would not be distorted by the binding crease.

Since the main focus of an atlas of this sort should be its images (and not necessarily the text, although that is important), it really detracts from the overall appreciation of the book to experience such distortion of maps and images page after page. Almost every 3D topographical map is distorted in this fashion.

The publisher would have better served the editors if care would have been taken to create maps and images which could either have been contained on one page, or designed with a hardcover binding as interference, reducing the image distortion.

Otherwise the book is beautifully done, containing clear appropriate images and easy, intelligent text, without noticable religious bias. If your looking just for images and maps, perhaps you might look elsewhere. But if you want interesting engaging text with nicely done (though poorly implemented) maps and drawings, as well as a wealth of descriptive artifacts from the lands of the bible, then I would recommend this book.