'World Wide' (core text of The Geography Collection)

World Wide - UK£18.99 (ISBN 0 340 61865 5)

This text which acts as the main book for this series, is divided into the following nine major sections:

The book is presented in a style akin to the majority of GCSE texts available today rather than the more traditional type of A level text. A set of key ideas opens each section and important words are clearly highlighted where they appear in the text, (a glossary at the end of each section helps to reinforce any new vocabulary). There are a number of short(ish) questions which help to develop and extend the issues touched on in each section with project suggestions and decision making exercises providing more substantial exercises. A large number of important skills such as interpreting satellite images, using statistical techniques and population pyramids are integrated into many of these exercises making them doubly useful.

'World Wide' has been developed to cover the major topics of most A level and Higher Grade syllabuses with six other 'option' books available (all priced at UK£5.99):

This marketing approach does have the merit of allowing teachers to purchase only those option books needed to supplement 'World Wide'. However having done such a good job of making this text both attractive and interesting I would have liked Hodder and Stoughton to take the plunge and combine all the option books with it to produce one complete A level textbook capable of challenging David Waugh's 'Geography An Integrated Approach'. Certainly 'World Wide' does its job extremely well and for those students and teachers looking for an up to date, tightly produced package this could well be the answer you're looking for.

My thanks to Julia Morris at Hodder and Stoughton for providing a review copy of this book.