Reviews for Atlas of the British Empire

The average rating for Atlas of the British Empire based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-07-06 00:00:00 Fars Nasr My knowledge of how the North American continent was explored has been a bit sketchy. First, there was Columbus; no, that's not right! First, there was Leif Ericson. Then, there was Henry Hudson. Not sure about this guy Amerigo Vespucci for whom the Western Hemisphere is named. Then came the United States with Daniel Boone and Lewis & Clark. Hmmmm.......lots of gaps to fill in. And this book does well to help the reader in doing so with substantive text and a profusion of maps/illustrations. So, why give it less than 5 stars? Blame the publisher not William Goetzmann. This book DEMANDS to be over-sized. In its present form, including size of font, it is impossible to enjoy without constantly using a magnifier. The details are an important part of the presentation, and it is obvious that the author was very diligent in providing them. Shame on you, McMillan for your cheap choices.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-05-17 00:00:00 James Guttschall I'm going to go ahead right about now and make what would seem to the casual reader an extremely picayune complaint about this atlas. And here it is. The type in this book is too goddamned small. Now, I realize that I'm no longer 18 years old and that, over the years, my eyesight has dimmed to the point where even reading your average Roy Lichtenstein painting makes me squint. Still, though, with the aid of reading glasses, I've learned to lead a semi-normal life, and can often get myself dressed and waxed without any help from the nurses. But this is an atlas, dammit, and when you can no more read the annotations on the maps than you can the actual text, it suggests that the problem is probably less one of presbyopia than with a publisher who's too cheap to print a book at a size that becomes it. Look, if I wanted to read an atlas off of microfiche, I would. But I found this book so physically challenging to read that I eventually wound up skipping the maps that didn't look interesting, which is too bad, because there's a lot of cool history here to be told. At least, I think there is. I could be wrong. I don't really know. BECAUSE THE GODDAMNED TYPE IN THIS BOOK IS THE SIZE OF ANT-MAN'S PENIS.