All human knowledge, least until 1990

This huge book was initially published by Mitchell Beazley in London during the early nineteen seventies. It was originally in ten volumes (the last two were the Alphapedia section in this book) and it presented knowledge primarily visually with beautiful illustrations and captions on each spread with an essay filling the top third of the spread. Random House revised the material for the American market but kept the basic spread format. I bought this revised 1990 edition recently because as a publication designer I thought it looked quite exceptional.

Why would anyone buy this book with its contents available for free on the net? Firstly: you can buy a copy incredibly cheaply. Secondly: though it's all on the net you'll have to scroll around various websites to find all the information that's presented on individual spreads in this book. Thirdly: it's just a pleasure to read information beautifully presented in this book. The 2911 pages are in four sections: The universe; earth; life on earth; man; history and culture; man and science; man and machines (1823 pages) Time charts (49 pages) Alphapedia (905 pages) Atlas (130 pages). 

The only downside (apart from being incredibly bulky) is that the technology section is obviously hopelessly out of date but you can always use the net to check up on tech from 1990.