Another interesting (hopefully) find in my late father-in-law’s atlas collection (to be fair, ‘collection‘ in this case has to cover just the three, hope that’s ok). Is the ‘Rand McNally World Atlas, Premier Edition’ from, if my reading of Roman numerals is accurate, 1946.
It says that the atlas was ‘engraved, printed and published by Rand McNally and Company’ of Chicago, New York and San Francisco.
Although being obviously for the US market, there are a few very interesting maps of Europe (“where the history comes from“). I found them interesting, after reading so much about the Second World War, the First World War and the couple of centuries before that. Helps you understand a little more where, for instance, Paul Fraser Collard has his Jack Lark fighting, what the situation was at the start of WWI, and maybe, where at least some of the causes of Germany’s starting of a second world war in 1939, came from.
The copy accompanying the map is as follows:
The Empire of Napoleon in 1810 represented the first ambitious attempt to unify modern Europe by force. Then, as in 1940, the English Channel proved to be the impassable defense line of the British Isles. Napoleon, like Hitler, turned eastward, but found Russia’s defense in depth too strong to overcome. Finally, the combined armies of the Allies proved victorious, and the balance of power was restored.
Click on the map picture at the top, to go to a full size version on Speesh Reads’ Pinterest.
