NEW WORLD HORIZONS

A beautiful book and a fascinating one, this modern geography. There's a wealth of interesting data, facts about relative distances, etc. that help give one a dramatic idea of the functional size of the world today, where distance is measured in time and energy. The reason for a book of this kind lies in the imperative necessity of understanding the factors which form a background of problem areas, for maps can lie -- or mislead -- yes, even these maps, if not carefully studied. I found the arrangement of material in relation to the maps, the pictures and the captions sometimes confusing; it's not a book for a quick look-see, but for careful study. One interesting basic fact stood out -- in a slim book, 74 pages were included before the Atlantic, Europe, the Middle East or Africa came into the picture, a commentary on the author-geographer's sense of the relative importance of the old world front -- and the new.