Robert Smithson Book

Never mind its age - its final entry is "The World In 1980" - this was always a rather poor offering. The whole concept was misguided, and the minor faults of the larger "Times" Atlas of World History are exaggerated in the smaller edition.

Essentially, the compilers were obsessed with producing complicated maps with gaudy colours, which were then spattered all over the page in profusion and confusion. Providing an insight into history was a long way down their list of priorities. They wanted people to be impressed by the complexity of their maps, which are so complex that it's hard to tell what they are meant to show.

The small number of scrappy paragraphs are written in a shallow, juvenile style and often have little relationship to the maps that accompany them. The reader will learn little from this book except how high an opinion of itself the design team had.