Book reviews: Atlas of the Netherlands

Summary

This review assesses nine additional sheets of the Atlas van Nederland published in 1967, situating them within the broader national atlas programme. The new material covers monthly and annual temperature patterns, frost and summer days, water-management authorities, prehistoric archaeology, educational attainment, agricultural land use and farm types, industrial distribution, and foreign trade. Particular attention is given to the atlas’s combination of statistical data, administrative structures, and thematic cartography. The water-management sheet effectively visualizes the Netherlands’ complex and partly overlapping polder and water-board jurisdictions through colour, boundary symbols, arrows, and inset mapping. Prehistoric settlement and finds are presented against geological and soil backgrounds, while the education maps reveal marked regional disparities, although identifying university locations would have improved interpretation. Agricultural land-use change is clearly summarized, but the farm-type map, based on the 1962 VAT method integrating livestock, arable farming, horticulture, and labour requirements, approaches the limits of cartographic intelligibility because of its 85 possible combinations. Maps of industry and foreign trade employ more conventional proportional symbols, sectors, columns, and area colouring. Overall, the atlas is praised for its excellent printing, sophisticated design, and substantial informational value, despite occasional complexity. By the end of 1967, however, only 58 percent of the projected atlas had appeared, suggesting that completion would require another eight to ten years.