Reviews: Atlas of Israel: Cartography, Physical Geography, Human and Economic Geography, History

Summary

This review examines the English edition of the comprehensive Atlas of Israel, originally published in Hebrew a decade earlier. The paper evaluates the atlas’s scope, cartographic quality, and content organization. It highlights the atlas’s detailed treatment of the land’s physical geography—including geology, climate, hydrology, and land use—and human geography, covering population, settlement, agriculture, industry, and culture. Special attention is given to the atlas’s innovative use of color and symbol variation to depict dynamic processes such as agricultural development and the settlement patterns of both Jews and Arabs. The review commends the work as immensely informative and splendidly produced. However, it identifies significant omissions: the absence of any map for the British Mandate period (1918–1948) and the lack of a pre‑1967 border depiction with Syria, despite the political relevance of the demilitarized zones. Additionally, the inclusion of transient subjects like tourism and trivial cultural indicators (cinemas, swimming pools) is questioned for an academic atlas. The review concludes that while the atlas represents a remarkable scholarly achievement, its selective historical coverage and some superfluous content detract from its objective completeness.