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>     I do not disagree with the atlases suggested so far, but I am not real
> happy with any atlas on the market when it is to be used as Darius suggests.
 
A propos my question about atlases, Johnny Sutherland writes:
 
> As another direction what about a CD-ROM atlas???    The first digital atlases
> were not very good but what about DeLorme's new atlas "Global Explorer"  I hav
   e
> not seen it, but if it is produced at the level of their "MapExpert" it might
> just do for a household with some geographical literacy and a computer.
 
An interesting idea, and I am sure this will become commonplace in the future.
However I think the price of CD-Drives (as well as the actual software?) will
have to come down quite a bit before they can be considered household items?
(and in our own case we will have to upgrade from our elderly CP/M home
word processor to a DOS machine at minimum, or else lose my "work" laptop
to household persuits!). Also, while many houses will have a home printer,
even a laser printer, very few that I know of have colour hard-copy output
facilities. It will be a time before software atlases totally replace the
hard copy I think....
 
But thanks for this and all other suggestions. Please keep them coming!
A suggestion made by a colleague here was the National Geographic Atlas
which, apparently, he saw on a trip Stateside. I don't know this one, though
I do of course know the Nat Geog political map "style" in general. Any
comments? Once the main flow of suggestions ebbs, I think I will request the
main contenders over Interlibrary Loans and give them a look-over.
 
Darius