This is the keystone of the yet to be completed series A History of East Central Europe, edited by the late Donald W. Treadgold and Peter Sugar. In quarto format, it consists of eighty-nine maps, thirty-five of them full-page, arranged in fifty sections. Each is accompanied by an explanatory text. Together, they describe the region between central Germany and Russia's western border and from the southern Baltic to western Anatolia, from the time of the later Roman Empire to the early 1990s.

The work is based on a catholic array of sources, including Manteuffel, Czaplinski, and Ladogorski on the historical geography of Poland, and Beinart, as well as de Lange and Gilbert, on the region's Jews. Economic, demographic, ecclesiastical, legal, and cultural history and political and military change are covered; and, though specialists might wish for fuller treatment of the eighteenth century, the balance between periods is on the whole well judged. The results of Dr Magocsi's labours are presented on well-designed, brightly coloured plates, often rich with data yet always readable. Furthermore, the work can be used as a much-needed gazetteer of place names since it provides up to a dozen linguistic variants (including Yiddish) for every town. In this respect, too, the Historical Atlas of East Central Europe fills a long-felt gap.

Historical atlases of eastern Europe tend to favour political geography and military history, and a similar tendency is detectable in this work. But it is neither narrow in approach nor topically restricted. Magocsi provides good clutches of maps on the commonly neglected medieval and early modern periods for cities; on the spread of German settlement and German law; on the Reformation and Counter-Reformation; on the dissemination of schools and printing-presses; and on ecclesiastical jurisdictions (which, however, fails to draw attention to the singularities of the Catholic Church in Germany). It is also good to see Venice given due attention as a colonial power of some importance in the region.

The thematic maps covering the modern period are rich in interest. They include canal-cutting and railway-building; the growth of population and cities; cultural and educational, as well as economic, development; administrative structures; and, not least, ethno-linguistic distribution, including ethnic cleansing and population movements during and after the Second World War. The final map showing east central Europe in 1992 recognizes the break-up of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union.