I grew up as an avid atlas and encyclopedia reader, poring over the pages during those pre-digital days, immersed in the mapped landscapes of distant lands from my tiny village in England, daydreaming of future globetrotting adventures and eager to educate myself about colorful foreign cultures.
When the pandemic made my world feel small, unable to travel freely, I retreated into the pages of my collection of well-thumbed atlases, keeping my jaunt juices flowing and expanding my mind even more as I disappeared into the pages, devouring all aspects of faraway destinations.
Beyond providing location and context of countries on continents, atlases help elevate our intellect and understanding of different regions around the world, their people, culture, and landscapes. They teach about the geography of the land, the topography, geology, bodies of water, tropics and deserts, mountain ranges and rivers, and the impact of our changing climate.
Digital has thankfully not killed the atlas industry. Yes, we drop pins and plug in locations to digitally map miles, steps, and directions from A to Z. We Google Earth (it’s a verb now) to clandestinely zoom in and nose around. We deep-dive into destinations on Wikipedia to learn about their history, politics, culture, cuisine, sites to see, and get a general lay of the land—both metaphorically and physically speaking.
But for bibliophiles like me, nothing beats touching and turning the pages of bound paper atlases and books about our planet, especially those that give a focused or different world view or perspective. Here are three current favorites on my coffee table.
“The World Atlas of Rivers, Estuaries and Deltas,” by Jim Best, Stephen Darby, Luciana Esteves, and Carol Wilson (Princeton University Press). As an Aquarius, I’m drawn to water and have been sponging up this beautifully visual book of maps, essays, graphics, and powerful essays showcasing the world’s waterways, explaining their flow and their vital importance to our ecosystem’s existence and human survival. Much more than an atlas, in this book’s pages you'll learn about water resource use and management, pollution and damming, and expert perspectives on what the future holds for our worldwide water, from babbling brooks to our planet’s vast oceans.
“Around the World in 200 Globes,” by Willem Jan Neutelings (ACC Art Books). I’ve loved globes since I was a wee one, spinning them fast to a screeching stop to see where in the world my finger landed. In school, geography was a favorite subject, and the lab counter was lined with a gaggle of different style globes the teacher used to illustrate where on Earth we were studying. At night for years I fell asleep to the glow of a globe light, wondering what continent I'd be exploring in the land of nod.
So I was delighted to discover Dutch architect Neutelings’ glorious book that showcases the diversity of globes from his vast personal collection of hundreds of ball-shaped maps of the world dating back to the 1900s. In this ode to globes, he features globes made of wood, cast iron, steel, and even paper. There are psychedelic globes, bubble-design globes, subterraneous spheres showing the globe’s inner layers, tiny toy globes, foldable globes, and even one made of calfskin on which the dark hair pattern resembles continents.
“The Earth in Our Hands: Photos from the International Space Station,” by Thomas Pesquet (Firefly Books). Pesquet is an astronaut who took his camera on a mission to the International Space Station to show us what our world looks like from this amazing vantage point high above Earth’s surface. His photos, taken on his space-station deployment in 2021, spectacularly capture all our world has to offer, each frame capturing our coastlines, mountains, cities, deserts, and rivers, from dawn to nightfall and under cloud cover. It’s an exceptional astronaut’s-eye view that most of us will only see through his book.
