ATLAS OF THE 20TH CENTURY , by Richard Overy, editor (Hammond Incorporated, 240 pages, $39.95).
“It is a truism,” says the editor of this handsomely illustrated volume, “that the 20th century has witnessed the most profound and wide-reaching changes of any century in human history. Yet the dimensions of that change are still worth recalling.”The atlas uses 250 detailed and colorful maps, charts, and diagrams–complemented by more than 350 color and black and white illustrations and photographs–to trace the course of those changes around the world. In addition to proceeding chronologically from the “Old World Order” of the years before World War I to the recent fall of communism and the redrawing of the map of Eastern Europe, the work focuses on themes such as the population explosion, the advancement in transportation and telecommunications, environmental problems, the emergence of third-world countries, and terrorism, which have characterized the last hundred years.
