“The Times Atlas of World History”, edited by Geoffrey Barraclough

360 pages, Hammond, ISBN-13: 978-0843711257

The Times Atlas of World History is an historical atlas first published by Times Books Limited (then a subsidiary of Times Newspapers, Ltd., and later a branch of Collins Bartholomew, which is a subsidiary of HarperCollins, and which in the latest editions has changed names to become The Times Complete History of the World; and I thought bank mergers were ridiculous). The first two editions were created by Barry Winkleman, the editorial director of Times Atlases and Managing Director of Times Books, and were edited by the Oxford Chichele Professor of Modern History Geoffrey Barraclough. It is divided into seven sections:

• The world of early man 
• The first civilizations
•  The classical civilizations of Eurasia 
• The world of divided regions 
• The world of emerging West 
• The age of European dominance 
• The age of global civilization

The book is prefaced with an eleven page World Chronology which is quick-view timeline across general geographic regions. It is suffixed with a Glossary (38 pages), helpful in cross-referencing names and places, and an index (26 pages). Each section is further divided into given subjects and contain between one and nine maps, charts to show economic, demographic, manufactures, agricultural output, drug trade and other data as needed. Occasionally illustrations are included on a topic. In the introduction to the first edition, Geoffrey Barraclough notes that the desire of The Atlas was to provide a history based on the viewpoint of its creators, hence the spread of Islam, for example, is centered at Mecca, as might have been the view of the 7^th Century Arabs.