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Muir's Historical Atlas Medieval and Modern
Maps of the ancient world from the world according to Herodotus to the East and West Roman Empire in the time of Augustus and finally to the world in 1962. An index is included as well as an introduction with information about the maps.
Hardcover
First published June 1, 1964
About the author
Ramsay Muir
180 books1 followerJohn Ramsay Bryce Muir was a British historian, Liberal Party politician and thinker who made a significant contribution to the development of liberal political philosophy in the 1920s and 1930s through his work on domestic industrial policy and his promotion of the international policy of interdependency.
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March 10, 2015
OK, officially clocking this as my most esoteric Goodreads review ever.
I've got to put this review in context: I've been looking for a good, "large size" historical atlas with emphasis on the medieval period forward, and have tried several of the few that seem to be available. The closest comparison to Muir's I could find is the Hammond Historical World Atlas, updated more recently than Muir's and deriving from the Times atlas series. So, mostly a comparative review here, and recognizing the publishing dates of Muir's (1911 first edition, 1964 final) makes it an imperfect "overall" answer.
In a nutshell, Muir's and Hammond's cover roughly the same material and time period, with many of the maps in the latter at least inspired by, if not derived from, or more directly connected with, the Muir's maps. However when placed side by side, the difference is night and day, and it's all in the design work. Muir's simply has better use of typography (in all senses - font, face, weight, kerning, etc) which make the maps easy to read while still communicating rich and multi-layered content. The use of color shading is also more subtle and effective in communicating key information, even though both clearly use the same printing ink "palettes". It's tempting to infer without evidence this is perhaps due to more hand-crafted design in the older Muir's and more machine-constrained design in Times/Hammond, but something is clearly lost in the latter. I know which one I'll be pulling off the shelf first even at risk of being older and dated (the atlas, not me).
Relative to content, yes, both are strongly (but not exclusively) Western Hemisphere focused, but this is to be expected given the era of publication. Muir's has larger and (I think) more interesting surprise / special topic maps, which are a pleasure to ponder and trigger map-dreaming (or wikipedia'ing). It also has a bias towards UK breakouts and a special obsession with the Holy Roman Empire; while both are arguably equally arcane in their historical minutiae, the UK history is at least roughly digestible, whereas the centuries upon centuries of HRE evolution and geographic pointillism aren't made any more intelligible by all the maps devoted to it. It's a blind spot in my history education and reading, but for now I'm perfectly content with the "fast forward to when Bismarck sorted it all out" level of understanding ... maybe someday I'll come back and all the pages of Jackson Pollock art will mean something.
If I take off the "large format constraint", the next atlas in my stack - the Anchor Atlas - is a strong contender for richest, most diverse, densest and deepest coverage (along with insanely detailed narrative), but it requires a scanning electron microscope to read; apparently before Wikipedia there was once a market for carrying the entire history of Western civilization around in your tweed jacket pocket (who knew). It's an awesome book in and of itself but "something different" than Muir's and Hammond/Times. In this class, Muir's is well worth finding used on Amazon and depriving some poor struggling library of their copy, if they're foolish enough to give it up.
I've got to put this review in context: I've been looking for a good, "large size" historical atlas with emphasis on the medieval period forward, and have tried several of the few that seem to be available. The closest comparison to Muir's I could find is the Hammond Historical World Atlas, updated more recently than Muir's and deriving from the Times atlas series. So, mostly a comparative review here, and recognizing the publishing dates of Muir's (1911 first edition, 1964 final) makes it an imperfect "overall" answer.
In a nutshell, Muir's and Hammond's cover roughly the same material and time period, with many of the maps in the latter at least inspired by, if not derived from, or more directly connected with, the Muir's maps. However when placed side by side, the difference is night and day, and it's all in the design work. Muir's simply has better use of typography (in all senses - font, face, weight, kerning, etc) which make the maps easy to read while still communicating rich and multi-layered content. The use of color shading is also more subtle and effective in communicating key information, even though both clearly use the same printing ink "palettes". It's tempting to infer without evidence this is perhaps due to more hand-crafted design in the older Muir's and more machine-constrained design in Times/Hammond, but something is clearly lost in the latter. I know which one I'll be pulling off the shelf first even at risk of being older and dated (the atlas, not me).
Relative to content, yes, both are strongly (but not exclusively) Western Hemisphere focused, but this is to be expected given the era of publication. Muir's has larger and (I think) more interesting surprise / special topic maps, which are a pleasure to ponder and trigger map-dreaming (or wikipedia'ing). It also has a bias towards UK breakouts and a special obsession with the Holy Roman Empire; while both are arguably equally arcane in their historical minutiae, the UK history is at least roughly digestible, whereas the centuries upon centuries of HRE evolution and geographic pointillism aren't made any more intelligible by all the maps devoted to it. It's a blind spot in my history education and reading, but for now I'm perfectly content with the "fast forward to when Bismarck sorted it all out" level of understanding ... maybe someday I'll come back and all the pages of Jackson Pollock art will mean something.
If I take off the "large format constraint", the next atlas in my stack - the Anchor Atlas - is a strong contender for richest, most diverse, densest and deepest coverage (along with insanely detailed narrative), but it requires a scanning electron microscope to read; apparently before Wikipedia there was once a market for carrying the entire history of Western civilization around in your tweed jacket pocket (who knew). It's an awesome book in and of itself but "something different" than Muir's and Hammond/Times. In this class, Muir's is well worth finding used on Amazon and depriving some poor struggling library of their copy, if they're foolish enough to give it up.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review