Whether planning a vacation, keeping in touch with world news, solving crosswords, or just exploring the world, this completely updated atlas has all the necessary information. An amazingly detailed view of the world is provided by 260 pages of mapping, and the illustrated thematic content covers the most important geographical issues of the day. The reference mapping has been completely revised with thousands of changes reflecting recent geopolitical and geographical changes around the world. A unique section shows how the world looked over the last 150 years through maps from the Times atlases. Updated plans of 32 of the world's great cities are included on the reference maps of the country in which they are located for easy reference. All thematic and statistical information in the introductory section has been updated to reflect current geographical and global issues. The index contains more than 130,000 place names, fully cross-referenced with alternative and former names.