Roman Town; Egyptian Town

This is a new series, entitled 'Metropolis', which plugs into KS3 history and offers an interesting 'interactive' design idea. The influence of computer technology is clear. Each book opens with a birds-eye view of a city and the reader is invited to zoom in or click on to particular areas, to investigate aspects of the city's social, economic and cultural life. A series of double page spreads follows; looking more closely at, say, the docks, the forum, fishing, farming or the temple. After that, comes a text which gives a 'time traveller's guide' to each city, including climate and clothes, eating out and where to stay. Finally, there is a 'guided tour' of major buildings and locations.

It is an attractive idea that encourages a holistic approach and there is some fascinating detail in the texts, which show a depth of knowledge about their subjects. I like, too, the emphasis given to architecture, and the physical feel of a place and time and its everyday interests and difficulties. But there are drawbacks. The idea of a 'typical' city is inevitably artificial and the tourist approach is anachronistic. The design of the book is itself an obstacle. The books divide between a first half dominated by illustration and a second half given over to text (incidentally repeating the earlier illustrations as backdrop). The birds-eye views in the first half are not especially informative in themselves and are accompanied by boxes of text in small type face and smaller pictures. The illustrations are very 'clean', a picture which is sometimes contradicted by the text: Roman Town speaks of deep wagon ruts in the road surfaces which are nowhere visible in the illustrations. The index is poor and the relation between the different sources of information in the books is not thought through. Comparing these titles with the new editions of Usborne's 20-year-old 'Time Traveller's' series, I am inclined to think that the older series is more successful in conveying information visually.