This is an equal area projection, meaning that it shows the size of different areas of the world proportional to their area on the globe. But this projection does not portray shape and direction accurately.

There are several online sources of information about map projections. For example, http://www.petersmap.com/page2.html, argues that the Peters projection is an improvement on the Mercator projection of 1569. The site includes the contrast below. Peters is on the left and Mercator on the right. Countries and regions highlighted on each projection to illustrate the size distortions of the Mercator Projection (Greenland, N W Europe and N America are bigger than reality in the Mercator Projection; Africa, Latin America and Asia, are smaller):

We have used the Peter’s Projection for most of the maps in this phase of the Atlas of Global Inequality because it provides global maps of useful proportions in which most countries of the world can be identified. It is the best of the equal area projections readily available on the Global Information Systems software, Arcview, that we are using.

A more complete discussion of map projections can be found in the Third World Atlas (Thomas and Crow, eds. 1994). One of the best online discussions of map projections is this page from the US Geologial Survey.