Every once in a while, a volume is published on such a seemingly ubiquitous subject that it gives one pause to discover how unusual its publication really is. Unfortunately, in the field of the geography of North America, this is the norm rather than the exception. How many comprehensive texts on the regional geography of the continent, or of the United States, have been published in the past thirty years? A handful come to mind, including Across This Land by John C. Hudson (2002), Regional Geography of the United States and Canada by Tom L. McKnight (2003), Regional Geography of Anglo-America by White, Foscue, and McKnight (1985), North America: A Geography of the United States and Canada by John H. Paterson (multiple editions, most recent, 9th edition, 1994); none of them are bestsellers, although perhaps all are familiar to readers of this journal.

Even so, it came as a surprise to discover that the most recent atlas published by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, The Statistical Atlas of the United States, was based on the 1890 census, making the recent publication of the Census Atlas of the United States: Census 2000 Special Reports something of a landmark achievement. Indeed, the only federal government publication worthy of mention in comparison is The National Atlas of the United States, published in 1970. That volume contained numerous maps based on census data, but covered a variety of other topics as well.

The Census Atlas of the United States represents a truly ambitious undertaking for those who undertook its creation and production. Within its covers, a broad array of demographic, social, cultural and economic topics are presented, often in considerable depth; included are detailed maps at the state, county, and metropolitan area level, and occasionally, temporal comparisons with prior census years 10, 20, 30, 50, or 100 years before. Due to the nature of the 2000 census of population and housing, the primary statistical resource for this atlas, the subject matter is constrained to reflect the questions for which information was collected on census returns. Successive chapters focus on the distribution of population (including urban and rural population patterns, population density, change over time, center of population, and year of maximum population, along with more detailed presentations); race and Hispanic origin (including percent distributions, prevalent race or ethnicity, race/ethnic distributions of children, and patterns of multiple race designation); age and sex (including sex ratio, median age, dependency ratio, and distributions of children and elderly by race/ethnicity); living arrangements (including patterns of married and divorced people, one-person households, patterns of families and households with children by adult status, grandparents responsible for their own children, and same-sex unmarried partner households); place of birth and US citizenship (showing patterns by nation of origin, sex ratio, age distribution, percent US citizen and naturalized citizens who were foreign born by year of entry into the U.S.); migration (including change over time, patterns by race/ethnicity and age, and percent residing in state of birth); language (focusing on language spoken at home and English speaking ability); ancestry (based on specific Census questions and potentially different from place of birth or race/ ethnicity); education (including percent of persons 25 or older who completed various levels of education, increase in high school completion from 1950 to 2000, and private school enrollment); work (including commuting patterns, labor force participation, and types of occupation); military service (including veterans, active-duty military population, and veterans in poverty); income and poverty (including median household income, median earnings, and poverty patterns by age, gender, and household type); and housing (including homeownership, value of owner-occupied housing, prevalent period when most housing was built, median monthly rent, minority ownership, percent mobile homes, type of household heating fuel, households without telephone service, households without plumbing, and crowded housing). The atlas includes detailed base maps and related materials, as well as a guide to how to read each type of map.

Most of the maps are choropleth, although other mapping techniques are used. Once the reader has become accustomed to the conventions applied to the maps for each topic, most maps are easy to read, as they use effective schemes for gradation of color across categories. One notable exception is the map of prevalent ancestry (p. 141), which uses 16 different colors to classify counties, several of which are rather difficult to differentiate. Maps showing quantitative variation in mapped variables are especially easy to read, with the US overall percent value for the variable of interest forming a class break, and comparisons are readily made even across sequential maps from one decade to the next. Each chapter begins with a brief introduction to provide context, and often includes data graphics to show patterns of demographic change over time.

As with any project of this magnitude, the authors had to make decisions as to what to include, and generally this reviewer is pleased with the choices made. The book would have been strengthened, however, with a discussion of the limitations of census data, including potential bias from under-enumeration; response rates; which questions were asked only on the long form given to 1 in 6 households; and references to resources where readers might obtain additional insights into the processes underlying the spatial patterns portrayed throughout the atlas. Casual readers of the atlas may think that these maps constitute spatial analysis of social and economic aspects of American society. A few of the maps presented do rise to the level of spatial analysis, but most merely classify a single, often refined, variable by state, county, or smaller areas of metropolitan regions. For many readers, what is presented is more than adequate, but those wishing to obtain a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of interest will have to look elsewhere.

All told, the authors and the numerous individuals whose acknowledgements occupy an entire page in the text have done an outstanding job in providing what I, at least, regard as an essential public service to the citizens of the United States. The Census Atlas of the United States belongs on the reference shelf of every public and academic library in the US, and the website at which the atlas content may be accessed should become much more widely known. Moreover, let us hope that in the future, we have at most ten years to wait for the publication of the next edition, and that the publication of this atlas helps to depoliticize the debate over funding the Census Cartographic Perspectives, Number 69, 2011 Reviews | 75 each decade by concretely demonstrating its vitally important role to the American economy, society, and culture.