I use this book with middle school kids. It is useful to make clear the variations between nations and peoples of the world. Examples: how old is your nation? Which nations sell or buy tobacco? Where are children poor or uneducated? What other nations have rights like ours?

I read this book, and it is GREAT! It shows great maps that are easy to understand. Even my kids love to look at this book.

I own an earlier edition that was more detailed and expansive, while this newer edition appears to be more vague. The sections of Ethnicity and Religion used to be more interesting as sections called Minority Rights (showing the various minorities of the world and their varied types of struggle), while the religion section told us the religions that were followed and their variants. This has been changed and not for the better. The sections on women are somewhat bigger and better however as we get to see Women Working and Mothers Working which would have helped the last edition. The economic indicators have also been changed, but not for the better as things are more vague. The US, UK, and Japan have a similar Stock Market value we are led to believe (as they all exceed 1 trillion dollars, but this is obvious. Shouldn't the US be in a class of its own in this regard? The book has a European perspective which I can appreciate as I am tired of the American perspective which I've grown up on, but I was actually looking for a more global perspective. Still though, this is a one of kind source for this sort of information for those of us looking for a quick look at how the world is today. I'd recommend it until something better comes along or they take some of the old and some of the new and do a better job with the next edition.

Every social scientist should have this book in his bookshelf. The book clearly conveys a broad array of data in a simple way (graphics), that enables you to retain the information for longer periods of time. Also, issues such as gender equality, pollution and genetically-growned food are included in this atlas.

This book is very informative, yet concise. I was looking for an atlas that would provide a good amount of information to get the "big picture" of countries. This one does it for me. The only other one I was considering (from The Economist) was not in stock. In retrospect, this might be better. Well, we'll call it a tie.