Books in Brief

Tour-de-force

Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East

Michael Roaf (New York: Facts on File, 1990) 238 pp. + 53 maps, 468 illustrations (342 in color), $45

Michael Roaf’s superb Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia continues a tradition of popular world histories initiated by British presses in the 1970s, such as Elsevier Phaidon’s Making of the Past, the Times Books’ atlases and earlier volumes in the Facts on File Cultural Atlas series. Trademarks of these publications are excellent maps, brief focused sections on individual sites or topics and high-quality color illustrations interspersed throughout the text. The authors have consistently been chosen from among experts in the field, on the correct assumption that accounts for the general public are best written by scholars.