Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Central Asia by Rafis Abazov - 9781403975416 - Compare Prices on New & Used Textbooks, Cheap Textbooks

From the Silk Road to the Great Game, Central Asia has long been a region of great strategic, political, and economic importance. Currently the home of large oil reserves, Islamic terrorists, and new democracies, Central Asia is of growing visibility to Americans. In this atlas, Rafis Abazov provides 50 two-color maps, each accompanied by a facing page of explanatory text, that graphically illuminate the region's history tracing back to the 8th-7th centuries B.C. From the spread of Islam to the invasion of the Mongols, the area has been at the crossroads of some of the world's most important developments, all succinctly explained in this book. Students will regard it as a useful reference, and general readers will value it for its clarity and wealth of information.

		Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Central Asia by Rafis Abazov ISBN-10: 9781403975416 ISBN-10: 1-4039-7541-8 ISBN-13: 9781403975416 ISBN-13: 978-1-4039-7541-6 Hardcover 2008-01-15 Palgrave Macmillan Find Lowest Price
Editorials

Product Description From the Silk Road to the Great Game, Central Asia has long been a region of great strategic, political, and economic importance. Currently the home of large oil reserves, Islamic terrorists, and new democracies, Central Asia is of growing visibility to Americans. In this atlas, Rafis Abazov provides 50 two-color maps, each accompanied by a facing page of explanatory text, that graphically illuminate the region's history tracing back to the 8th-7th centuries B.C. From the spread of Islam to the invasion of the Mongols, the area has been at the crossroads of some of the world's most important developments, all succinctly explained in this book. Students will regard it as a useful reference, and general readers will value it for its clarity and wealth of information.
Reviews

Very difficult to find similar literature in Central Asian history I would recommend to buy this atlas because (1) here you can find a lot of information about the history and current development of each Central Asian country starting from ancient period, (2) information was obtained from different alternative sources and consolidated together, (3) graphic materials such as historical and geographical maps help to get a quick idea about the region, (4) it is very difficult to find the book on Central Asian history as balanced as this one. The fact is that it is very difficult to find objective information regarding the history of Central Asia. Since Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan got their independence from the USSR, each country started rewriting its history trying to magnify its own position as well as distorting or concealing some facts that might show the country in a negative manner. Central Asian scientists primarily focus on the history of their own countries, and still cannot get to consensus and create united historical textbook. I think the atlas would be better if it has more colored pictures.
A mediocre attempt but useful since there isnt much choice I bought this book because a brilliant atlas on Central Asia by Yuri Bregel was not available. Besides it was 10 times more expensive. This book is a lame attempt by Rafis to illustrate the history of central asian landscape. The choice of colors is so pathetic even a high school art student can do better. The little factoids (I haven't checked for veracity) on the left hand side is useful and informative alongside the maps on the right side. The publishers did not do a good job and should have hired a competent illustrator who could use all the colors at his disposal to come up with some brilliant and more descriptive maps from the ancient scythian era to the modern times. The ancient scythian and early hunnic and turkic eras have not been given their fair share of coverage and the atlas is biased towards later turkic, czarist, soviet and modern era. Perhaps due to authors' personal bias in favor of his own heritage etc. But since there is no other atlas apart from this one and the one by Bregel on Central Asia and the 6 stans, it wasnt a total waste of money. I have therefore assigned it 3 stars.
Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Central Asia The publication is very useful for every one who studies Central Asian history andCulture and Customs of the Central Asian Republics (Culture and Customs of Asia) internaitonal relations.
best of the central asian atlases for the money This is a nice atlas with useful information, even though it is not full color. Simply put, there are no competing atlases about Central Asia costing less than $150, so this is your only option if you're interested in the area.