Atlas of the Pacific Northwest, Ninth Edition (review)

Now in its ninth edition, the Atlas of the Pacific Northwesthas been produced for almost 50 years. The Atlascovers Oregon, Washington, and Idaho; a nice, glossy, terrain map of the three states graces its cover. The Atlas's contributors are from the Department of Geosciences at Oregon State University, Corvallis. The first chapter, written by Philip L. Jackson, presents an introduction to the region. He also contributed the excellent photographs, which unfortunately are too few and diminished by the poor quality of reproduction. The regional overview is followed by 17 chapters, which cover standard atlas topics. Throughout the work, various contributors have done a scholarly and workman-like job describing their topic areas.

Atlases enjoy a long tradition in geography, and should serve to pique interest, excite the imagination, and provide a background to understanding place and relationships of phenomena. Unfortunately, the Atlas of the Pacific Northwestfails on all three counts. Maps set an atlas apart from other reference books. Monmonier (1993, pp. 247-255), in Mapping it Out,warned against overuse of automation. Sadly, the Atlas of the Pacific Northwestdemonstrates this point: by relying too heavily on Quark, Illustrator, and Photoshop, the maps suffer from poor quality and appearance. The majority of the maps are gray and brown with black type, perhaps reflecting the need to economize. A small number of color maps do appear, though, and the text titles in a few of the chapters are red, green, and blue. Overall, the Atlaslacks consistency in design and format.

Choropleth and dot maps are amply represented in the Atlas of the Pacific Northwest. While of some utility, the majority of these maps would have benefitted from reference points, such as major cities, large rivers, or notable mountain ranges, to better focus the data display. Many of the maps are unreadable. For example, in the chapter on "Climate," Map 7-2 shows hydrothermo graphs for the reporting stations at such a tiny scale that a magnifying glass attached to the page would have been a useful addition. Other maps are just silly, such as one covered by brown and mauve bubbles showing percentage of geese and duck harvested per county (Map 18-2, p. 149). A number of the figures in the Atlasare quite awful. Some easily earn Tufte's designation as "ducks": "When a graphic is taken over by decorative forms or computer debris, when the data measures and structures become Design Elements, when the overall design purveys Graphical Style rather than quantitative information, then the graphic may be called a duck in honor of the duck-form store, Big Duck" (Tufte 1983, p. 116). While a number of the figures in the Atlasare "ducks," I would nominate Figure 16-3 on page 131, "Manufacturing Employment Percentages in Metropolitan Statistical Areas," as an outstanding example of the genera. The figure is a bar graph composed with many segments connected by lines, and is supposed to show the relationships between places, products, and employment percentage by sectors. Frankly, the intricate design of Figure 16-3 reminds me of the designs on Iban baskets from Borneo.

I was sorely disappointed in the Atlas of the Pacific Northwest. The Pacific Northwest is an exciting region of the country; this atlas is boring. I suggest that the editors and contributors, all of whom are excellent scholars, take a look at other regional atlases (the Atlas of Hawai'icomes to mind), break out of the past, be more judicious in the choice of figures and maps, and do something new and exciting.