----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > 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