Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My old 5th edition (1977) of this atlas sustained some water damage, so I decided to upgrade to the new 11th. My 2 stars are in relationship to a previous 5 stars. Perhaps I would rate it higher if I didn't have an earlier edition to compare it with. It's not all bad: there is a new enlarged view of southern China and Taiwan, a larger map of Korea, a blown-up view of central Japan, a new enlarged view of central Mexico, better coverage of South America, etc. Also some inevitable trade-offs, e.g. two nice expanded views of California, but the big map of Alaska is gone. There are several major problem areas, however: a couple of glaring examples: in the older version of central Italy, the scale is 1:1,000,000 and includes a detailed map of Rome which is laid over the sea off the west of the peninsula. In the new version, the scale is only 1:1,250,000 which includes a vast, empty expanse of the Tyrrhenian Sea taking up about half of the whole map. The map of southern Italy is even worse: it is the same reduced 1:1,250,000 and is about 3/4 empty ocean, whereas the older version has the more detailed 1:1,000,000 scale which also shows more detailed views of Sardinia and Sicily, and much less empty ocean. Greece and its islands also show up smaller in the new version (the page dimensions are the same!). Standard written Greek contains an accent-mark for each longer word, to show where it has the stress; my old 5th edition faithfully records this information for the towns, rivers, etc., but in this "new improved" edition the accent-marks are all gone! The new version has a 1:3,000,000 map of the whole of Turkey, including generous swaths of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean; the older version had two much more detailed (1:2,000,000) maps of eastern and western Turkey. The scale on the New York/New Jersey map is about the same in both editions; the older has a 1:250,000 scale map of the NYC urban area filling in the large area of ocean s.e. of the city, but in the new version that map is gone, all we have left is the big empty ocean. I'm sure that saved them some money, but not if nobody wants to buy it..... The city maps which were tucked into "low-rent" spaces (empty ocean etc.) in many, many places in the old versions are now all gone, so goodbye also to the big beautiful maps of the London and Paris metropolitan areas (2 full pages each): no city-maps allowed! Although the paper-quality is good, and the inking has a crisp, clean look, the topography is not as much fun as before: everything is in a lighter shade (they saved themselves some more money!) and so the distinctions between lowland and mountainous areas are not as clear as before. I was going to donate my older atlas to the department library, but now I'm going to keep it! I feel like the new version is a kind of insult to my intelligence: I don't need to see all of Turkey together to realize it is a single country, what I expect to see in a big, expensive atlas is DETAIL, not cost-cutting. Since this is supposed to be the best, I would be willing to pay even a little more, if I got my money's worth. This atlas may still be the best, but its high price combined with the loss of previous valuable features may cause potential buyers to look more at the competition, e.g. the Oxford Atlas of the World.