Macmillan Color Atlas of the States

Take a cross-country tour with splendid detail and extraordinary color in this comprehensive atlas that is also an almanac of all 50 states. 300+ color maps & charts.

A talented cartographer best known for the Atlas of the 1990 Census (LJ 4/1/93) and Atlas of United States Environmental Issues (LJ 5/15/91), Mattson has produced a visually pleasing, fact-filled volume that profiles the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Each state receives seven pages of coverage, including a sizable political map, various smaller special-purpose maps, and encyclopedic text describing the state's history and basic social, political, economic, and demographic conditions. An 18-page section titled "State & Metro Fast Facts" appends additional data. Aimed mainly at students in junior high school and beyond, the atlas offers reliable, objective, up-to-date information. On the negative side, running heads for the states are too small, and Mattson has the disconcerting practice of listing "Major Cities" and their grid locations with each political map but failing to include some of the cities on the map. Overall, a high-quality production, though much of the material can be found in general encyclopedias.?Ken Kister, author of "Kister's Best Encyclopedias," Tampa, Fla.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This volume summarizes information about each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia using color maps. Mattson is a cartographer and the author of several well-received atlases, including Atlas of the 1990 Census [RBB Mr 15 93]. This new atlas is similar to Atlas of the 1990 Census, but while that book looked at the entire U.S. by state, this one looks at individual states by county. Seven pages are devoted to each state using a standard format similar to state entries in World Book Encyclopedia. Text provides capsule accounts of cultural features, climate, environment, history, important events, famous citizens, government, education, the economy, and resources. The large political map for each state is not as detailed as the state maps in encyclopedias, and only several dozen place-names on the map are indexed. Smaller maps show physical regions, population growth and density, distribution of income, distribution of minorities throughout the state, and land use. The physical regions map of Illinois misidentifies the Gulf Coastal Plain as being in the northern part of the state when it is actually at the southern tip. Graphs, charts, and tables show unemployment rate, population projections, relative size of economic sectors, and the ethnic composition of the state. They are well designed and easy to interpret. A useful feature is the comparisons of the state to its region and to other states. Seventeen pages of fast-facts tables at the end of the book further summarize statistics for states and metropolitan areas. Information on four territories (Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa & Northern Mariana Islands) is squeezed onto two pages. The one-page appendix is puzzling. It contains brief accounts of environmental quality for six states. This information is included in the state entry for all the other states.

The information in this atlas is available in most encyclopedias but is not always as attractively presented as it is here. The synthesis of maps and text makes this a useful, if pricey, item for school and public libraries.