american geographical society

For a while, Nelson Doubleday was the king of sticker book publishing: while the Science Program enjoyed the greatest success, Nelson Doubleday published other ‘albums’ with the help of other educational organizations as well. The American Geographical Society was established in 1851 as a resource for high-quality geographic information and cartography. From 1955 to 1973, just about the same range as the Science Program, the Around the World Program was written by knowledgable authors in association with the AGS for the purpose of teaching children about the various countries and continents of the world.

The Around the World Program used a nearly identical production model as the Science Program. A subscriber would receive books by mail, along with newslettery updates and the draw-pull style storage boxes. The books themselves are half-letter sized, 5½” by 8½”, and printed in two colors on the internal pages. The interior illustrations may be photos, just black-and-white, or two-tone line illustrations. The color photos were included separately: stapled in each album’s center was a large folded sheet of labels, gummed on the back and glossy full-color on the front. Throughout the pages of the book, usually one or two on a page, the subscriber would attach the labels in their proper positions according to the instructions in the empty void.

While not as common as the Science Program books, the Around the World Program can still be found quite often, usually in groups of 6 as that’s the amount that would fit into a single storage box. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a map lover, so the covers of these booklets have a certain appeal to me. The Science Program covers were inconsistent between volumes, but the Around the World Program booklets (at least all that I’ve seen) uniformly have wrap-around maps of the documented region, encompassing both front and back covers, in full-color with representational illustrations of the country’s assets and resources. The content of the books is appropriate for the age of the readers (assumed to be pre-high-school aged children), and has the tone and informativeness of a Childcraft book or National Geographic’s World magazine. Most books run around 60 pages, and they fit quite a bit of information into the short space. While I didn’t fact-verify everything written, I found the books to be even-handed with history, not being too patronizing or prejudiced with the inevitable talk of war and domination that fits into most country’s histories. Don’t expect to buy these cheap at a rummage sale and use them to supplement your children’s education: the last of these were written in the early 1970s, and so much has changed in the last 35 years as to render the books quite out-of-date. As a historical reference, the books’ use of photos and images give a broad view of the country from a mid-20th-century snapshot of life, which would be a worthy addition to a world history book collection. If you’re interested in collecting this series specifically, be prepared to shop extensively — the books that I’ve seen are quite up-to-date for the publishing year, which would mean that each country’s book saw regular revisions over the 25-plus years that the books were in production and there’s a distinct possibility that a complete collection means a couple dozen of each individual album.

Besides the usual suspects of eBay and collectible booksellers, I was surprised to find that the American Geographical Society still lists their NOS of these booklets on page 20 of their 2007 catalog. While the first edition of the Around the World program died out in the 1970s, the line was revived in the 1990s and a second edition of the Around the World program was produced for a select list of countries. The new editions are more traditional books, so if you’d prefer the satisfaction of inserting photos manually into your books, your best bet is to track down Nelson Doubleday Inc’s original set.