I think this question fits this subreddit, but if it doesn't can someone suggest a better fit?
I am looking for a gift for a child who is fascinated with what the political borders of the world were at different times and how they evolved into what they are today.
I have looked a various listing of books, but it is often unclear exactly what maps are in the books or what the quality is (full page? Color?). I am hoping someone here can vouch for a book they think would be a good fit from personal experience.
A specific request from the kid is a world map predating the formation of the USSR. I tried to find a globe of that, but they all seem so expensive. It seems the best bang for the buck would be a book. (although I would rather have a globe to avoid issues arising from projections).
Any help is appreciated.
I can't give you any advice on the pre-USSR map specifically, but one I can personally vouch for is this book called Great City Maps. It's a full-color collection of various surviving maps of great cities dating from Roman times up until about 1900. There are a couple of maps of Moscow and a couple of maps of St. Petersburg in there.
I have it and it's a pretty great coffee table book. You're not going to get a huge in-depth study of any particular city, but the maps are all big and colorful, and are full reproductions of the originals. So you'll see stuff like a map of London in 1572, and the text will point out some of the highlights on the map from then, and what still exists and what doesn't and, to some extent, what happened. It also serves as a good overview of the history of maps, as you can see how much more detailed and accurate they got over the centuries.
You can see the table of contents in the link above, and a few more pages can be seen in its Amazon preview. Hopefully, that gives you enough to see if it's worth it. It should be said that the pages in the preview are from the first pages in the book, which are the oldest maps. As they move into the 1400s and later, they begin to have the detail that we're now used to. The dimensions of the book are large, so it looks better in real life than it does in the preview.
By the same publisher is Great Maps which seems to be basically the same thing, except the maps are mostly country-wide, or continent-wide instead of city maps.
For the Russian maps, though I can't vouch for them myself, it looks like Restless Empire: A Historical Atlas of Russia from Harvard University Press and The Penguin Historical Atlas of Russia from Penguin Publishing are going to be two of your best bets. They both have smaller dimensions than the Great Maps books, but the Restless Empire book is 8.5" x 11"--the standard size of a sheet of paper. The Penguin book is smaller.
I hope this helps. Good luck!
The Cultural Atlas series has come out from several publishers, including Stonehenge, Facts on File, and Time-Life. The Cultural Atlas of Russia and the Former Soviet Union would be your target. It would have maps as the primary source of information with photographs and short essays on the development of countries in this area. I don't have this particular volume, but among the modern ones, I've found China and Japan good. (There are historical atlases in the series, like Ancient Egypt or The Greek World.)
Look for it at Amazon, Alibris.com, and Ebay to find best condition at best price.
Generally, what you're looking for is called an historical atlas. That is, it shows the world as it was, like pre-Revolutionary France or colonized Africa, rather than the present day.