People's Handy Atlas of the World: 1910 Census Edition

A remarkable window into how the world looked to Americans in 1910, this atlas captures a planet on the eve of profound transformation. Based on fresh data from that year's federal census, it presents over 100 specially engraved maps documenting nations, cities, and geographical features as they were understood just before the catastrophic reshaping of the 20th century. The boundaries shown here are ghosts now - nations that would soon vanish, empires at their peak, cities whose names would change with the politics of coming decades. For genealogists, historians, and cartography enthusiasts, this volume offers something no modern digital map can: the specific, sometimes surprising geography of a world about to be remade by war, migration, and revolution. The indexed entries of towns and their populations provide a statistical snapshot of urban life when New York held barely five million souls and Los Angeles was still a small Pacific outpost. This is not merely a reference work but a time capsule, preserving the assumptions and knowledge of an era when the globe still contained empires and the word 'globalization' had not yet been coined.