NEW: Atlas of the World - National Geographic (3587)

For generations of people worldwide, National Geographic maps have been more than images on paper. They've served as portals to distant corners of our planet and beyond. Their visual contours have made palpable remote mountains and distant seas, the labyrinthine beauty of great cities, and the evolving face of the world - from quixotically changing political boundaries to the slow motion of tectonic plates. In the past our maps were based on human interpretation and the draftsman's art, which translated the face of the Earth into painstaking renderings in pen and ink.

With the Eighth Edition of the National Geographic Atlas of the World, human interpretation and draftsmanship have been raised to an entirely new level by cartographic tools inconceivable to former mapmakers. Satellite-based global positioning systems (GPS) and a steady stream of other satellite data allow us to generate amazingly precise and detailed portraits of the planet, without ever touching pen to paper. Powerful new computer software programs, called Geographic Information Systems (GIS), let us select, analyze, and layer data to depict the complicated, interlocking forces at work on the ground - from geologic conditions to human migration to environmental change. Never has our ability to map the world been so accurate and flexible, critical in a world continually changing at an unprecedented and increasingly dramatic rate.

In this new edition of the Atlas, the first of the new century, we have made more than 15,000 updates to our map plates. They reflect the political, social and environmental upheavals that have occured in just the six years since our previous Atlas was published.

In these turbulent times, the Eighth Edition Atlas is our way of bringing you an expanded vision of the Earth - its astonishing diversity, its complexities and trends, even ways to help alleviate some of its problems. But most of all we hope this edition leaves you with a lasting appreciation for the dynamism and grace of the planet that is home to us all.

Book Dimensions: 470mm x 315mm