Star Wars: The Essential Atlas

I bought this book because I wanted to start reading some of the Star Wars novels again, but was intimidated by how much the Expanded Universe has grown in the past decade. I remembered how much I liked the "essential" Star Wars guides when I was younger. Sadly, these books are also become somewhat redundant - with wikipedia - or Wookiepedia - nowadays, you can easily find information about the major Star Wars characters, species, and ships on the internet. Fortunately, Star Wars: The Essential Atlas is different. Unlike many other "essential" books, it is actually pretty essential if you really want to understand the galaxy.This isn't simply a bunch of pretty pictures (like the The New Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels ). Rather, it is a collection of maps demarcating the borders of the major political groups and plotting the routes the main characters took in the movies and Expanded Universe. Finally, you can see where Tatooine, Hoth, and Endor fall in relation to each other. This is particularly useful if you want to understand some of the more convoluted military campaigns, such as the Thrawn series. There's absolutely nothing on the web the provides this level of information and detail. The book also has a section featuring several important planets - almost like the older The Essential Guide to Planets and Moons , but much better and with great renditions of the planets. My only minor complaint is that it doesn't have a small picture of the native species to go with each planet. But, then again, that'd probably way too much for one book. I'd say if you get any one Star Wars reference, make sure it's this one. It's actually very useful. Oh, and by the way, it does have some awesome, unique artwork (I love the realistic clone emperor), but that's only a bonus. This is first and foremost a reference.

Quite simply, The Essential Atlas is the most detailed, heavily-researched, and informative Star Wars Essential Guide to date. It creates precise locations for planets for a shared continuity that wasn't even originally supposed to have planetary locations, because of the difficulty involved. Eventually a basic outline of the galaxy's locations was created for the New Jedi Order series, but The Essential Atlas is the first to nail down the locations with a grid system, and it works. You can even use it to track where characters in a novel or the movies are going in relation to the galaxy as a whole. There are also expanded profiles of various planets, such as those from the movies, the better-known ones from the Expanded Universe, and a few from both Clone Wars series. Just as important as the atlas aspects, however, is the historical information. Much of the Atlas is filled with history of conquest and events over 25,000 years of Star Wars history, accompanied by maps of the galaxy and the spread of influence. This makes it sort of like a new New Essential Chronology, only with more concrete "facts" via the charts and exact dates given for some events, courtesy of Star Wars timeline enthusiast Nathan Butler. The artwork is also great. The illustrations are done in the style of those in "The Essential Guide to the Force," and often serve to give a realistic look to many characters which were previously only found in comics or books. Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone with the slightest interest in the Star Wars galaxy.

When I purchased this I didn't expect to be as impressed as I was. A guide like this is a difficult, painful undertaking. But Daniel Wallace and Jason Fry do an outstanding job of balancing history, raw geography, and interesting planetary data into an entertaining and incredibly useful guide. The Galaxy Map in the first chapter alone is almost worth the price. Coupled with the grid system it introduces and the index in the back, locating just where a planet is becomes much simpler than hunting along the circles of the various sectors, hoping to stumble across the planet you're looking for. A larger poster of this would be an item I'd purchase a few copies of. If you run Star Wars at all, you need this book. Hyperspace time calculations used to be a wild shot in the dark. With this in hand, you've finally got a logical route you can plan out. But even non-roleplayers will find this a handy reference and a good read.

The Essential Atlas is a comprehensive, robust guide to the STAR WARS galaxy. This third edition compiles information from the entire history of the Expanded Universe before the Disney acquisition and Legends label. Beautifully bound, I've been able to dig into this book regularly and arrive at a page with details from any number of obscure planets that starred in the EU. More than that, the Atlas is written from an in universe perspective and offers insight and depth into the galaxy, its systems, cultures and races. Carefully investigated, with supplemental material provided online by the authors, this is a living Holocron of the kind of depth and history the Star Wars galaxy once offered. A must have for any Star Wars enthusiast. This is where Wookieepedia's inspiration comes from.

This book is FANTASTIC! Highly recommended A++++. As a die-hard Star Wars fan i've found this reference VERY comprehensive and extremely useful in linking the expanded Star Wars universe together and making further sense of the complex history of the Galaxy. The only thing that'd make it even better would be if a bit more attention was paid to EVERY single planet that has ever had even a small mention within Star Wars books and graphic novels. Don't get me wrong - 99% of them are in this book - but a lot of them are only a reference point on a map. I would love to see further expanded editions of this Atlas with updates and new info on planets that haven't really been talked about within this edition (i.e. like those that appear in stories within 'Tales from the Empire'), and maybe more images of the life forms that exist on the all of the planets too (i.e. combination of this atlas and 'Essential guide to alien species/characters/etc'). Quite a big ask but hey, I would buy it!

Excellent book, this is an updated version of the Guide to Planets and Moons and includes locations from the prequels and Clone Wars as well. Also includes more statistical info than the previous book, including population amount and species makeup. Doesn't have stuff from the sequel trilogy but to be honest not much is lost there, considering Jakku, Hosnian Prime, and that stupid salt planet from Last Jedi are really just rip-offs of Tatooine, Coruscant, and Hoth respectively.

This is one of my all time favorite Star Wars books, in part because it combines two of my favorite kinds of books- an atlas (I love to look at maps- yes, I'm aware that I'm weird XD) and a Star Wars book. I LOVE to peruse this thing, and my old one fell apart, which is why I just ordered a new one from Amazon. That brings me to the little caveat with this one, a fairly common defect in this large-format paperback SW books. As I said, mine fell apart, and this happened because it wasn't bound very well- I had it for a year before the pages just started to fall out. I was disappointed, to say the least. Plus, this isn't the only book from this series I've had this happen to (I have the Essential Chronology, too, and it fell apart. I was able to fix that one though.) But why I love the book: It's awesome for die-hard fans, or just the fan who is obsessed with details, such as knowing what planet is in what region of the galaxy or what Naboo's main exports are, kinda like me. It starts with a section looking at each major region of the galaxy, then goes into a chapter profiling several major worlds, one by one. The final section is a historical atlas of the Star Wars galaxy, arguably my favorite part of the atlas. The maps are colorful, detailed and easy to read. The historical section tells the story of a fictional galaxy, but it reads like a real-world historical atlas, making it a fun read for folks who are both history buffs and SW nuts. Recommended for all SW fans, regardless of their level of rabid-ness!

My teenage son first saw this book at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum gift shop. Unfortunately, as he was coming to find us and ask permission to buy this book, they closed that section of the store and they refused to let him go back and get it. He was unhappy to say the least. I assured him that Amazon would have it and at a better price.... Mom always knows best. He was thrilled to get it quickly from Amazon (I was happy that it was almost half the price) and it is an extensively thorough book about the Star Wars Saga. Very detailed descriptions of planets and places. From the core to the rim- the official guide to the Star Wars galaxy.