Colin McEvedy

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Colin Peter McEvedy (6 June 1930 – 1 August 2005), was a British psychiatrist, historian, demographer and non-fiction author. He was born in Salford, Lancashire and died in London. McEvedy's profession was psychiatry, in which he had a distinguished career. He became perhaps better known, though, as a historian and demographer, and certainly so by the public at large. Between 1961 and 2002 he produced a number of historical atlases which, unlike most such atlases, feature fixed base-maps: In most cases, each atlas uses a single principal base-map, which is shown repeatedly, at many dates, as the atlas goes along, thus illustrating changes over the ages, from ancient down to modern, within the chosen area. The accompanying text, typically, is mostly a running commentary on what the maps of a given atlas show. Another feature of the atlases is McEvedy's witty and engaging writing-style, which he used on occasion to challenge established opinions among historians and demographers. Although he was not, strictly speaking, a professional in those fields, he became professionally respected in them, with his views making their way into standard textbooks.

[edit] Publications

Penguin Historical Atlases

• The Penguin Atlas of Medieval History (1961) ISBN 0140708227
• The Penguin Atlas of Ancient History (1967) ISBN 0140511512
• The Penguin Atlas of Modern History (1972) ISBN 0140511539
• The Penguin Atlas of Recent History (1982) ISBN 0140511547
• The New Penguin Atlas of Ancient History (2002) ISBN 0140513485
• The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History (1992) ISBN 0140512497
• The New Penguin Atlas of Recent History (2002) ISBN 0140515046
• The Penguin Atlas of North American History (1988) ISBN 0140511288
• The Penguin Atlas of African History (1980, 2nd ed. 1995) ISBN 0140513213
• The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Pacific (1998) ISBN 0140254285

The Atlas of World History (with Sarah McEvedy)

• From the Beginning to Alexander the Great (1970) ISBN 0298791250
• The Classical World (1973) ISBN 0298791269
• The Dark Ages (1972) ISBN 0298791277

Unpublished Volumes:

• The Medieval World
• The European Expansion
• Revolutions
• Colonial Empires
• The Modern Age

Other Books

• The Atlas of World Population History (with Richard Jones) (1978) ISBN 0140510761
• Rise of the World's Cities (1984) ISBN 0871967731
• World History Factfinder (1984) ISBN 0025831909

Articles

• "The Bubonic Plague" Scientific American February 1988

[edit] External links

• obituary from the Times newspaper
• obituary from the Independent newspaper
• obituary from the British Medical Journal