De nouveaux atlas

Summary

This review article from the Annales de Géographie assesses a multilingual geographical vocabulary published under the Council of Europe and several recent national and regional atlases (North Carolina, Spain, Hungary, France, the Pacific Northwest, and Czechoslovakia). The reviewer examines each work's organization, thematic coverage, cartographic design, and practical usefulness. The vocabulary is welcomed as an aid to reading foreign-language maps and documents. Among the atlases, quality and innovation vary: some offer rich, accurate documentation; Bachi's Graphical Rational Patterns proposes a coding system for exact quantitative mapping; the Czechoslovak atlas stands out as a monumental national achievement. Together these works illustrate contemporary trends in cartography and geographic documentation.