Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Summary:
Tourists, nature lovers, and even armchair travelers will discover hours of pleasurable reading in this huge compendium of world-famous sites. They’ll also find a wealth of ideas for their next vacation trip. It’s a guide to the most spectacular natural sites—and sights— around the world, from the magnificent Angel Falls in the Venezuelan rain forest to the fiery volcanic Mediterranean island of Stromboli, off the coast of Sicily. Other natural wonders include Glacier Bay, and Mendenhall Glacier in Alaska; Death Valley and Yosemite Park, California; the Rhine Valley in Germany; Mount Blanc in France; Mount Olympus in Greece; Mount Fuji in Japan; Easter Island; and for divers, spectacular places like the Mariana Trench in the Pacific. Here is a virtual circumnavigation of the globe, with each natural wonder, chosen for its grandeur and sheer beauty. Each location is profiled with a color photo, a description of its origin and present-day features, a thumbnail-size locator map, and a succinct table of statistics. For instance, this volume describes—
Ayers Rock, the 500-mile-circumference sandstone elevation that rises out of the flat central Australian Outback and is believed to be a holy place by Australia’s Aborigines
Bryce Canyon, Utah, a rugged, dramatic national park located just a few hours’ drive from Salt Lake City
Iguazu Falls, an extensive series of 275 waterfalls on the Brazil-Argentina border, described by one naturalist as an ocean pouring into an abyss Here are breathtaking locations on every continent—sites so spectacular that once seen they are never forgotten. Hundreds of full-color photos.
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
Beautiful book and fun to read
Customer Rating:
I checked this book out of the library but we liked it so much, I am going to buy my own copy. Amazingly, my kids like to flip the book open for fun and then fantasize about going to the place they find! Better than watching Hannah Montana, that's for sure. We have a lot of places to visit now, though.
Not a sit down and read book..
Customer Rating:
I found this not to be a sit down and read book but a dream, reference book. It takes many visits, each one a brain adventure. Great book.
Best Buy on Travel books!
Customer Rating:
This book was amazing... I wasn't expecting it to be 3inches thick! It is chock-full of beautiful pictures and helpful discussion on destinations all over the world. A must for any curious traveler!
Could be better, but...
Customer Rating:
Given the enormity of the task of identifying 1,001 of the world's greatest wonders, the authors did a pretty good job. But they were clearly biased in their selections. This book was originally published in England. Not coincidentally, 54 pages are devoted solely to the British Isles. This represents about 6% of the book. This may not seem like that much until you consider that the Britsh Isles have about 0.2% of the world's land mass. Likewise, about 170 pages were devoted to Western Europe ... 19% of the book for 2.5% of the world's land mass. Other sections of the book seemed to be given disproportionate coverage as well. 10% of the entire North America section was devoted to New Mexico. The whole of Canada barely got more coverage than this. The enormous country of Russia got just 7 pages. New Zealand - an incredibly scenic country - got just 13 pages. The breathtaking islands in French Polynesia got 2 pages of coverage (and they completely ignored Moorea Island).
All of this being said, this is still a fairly impressive book that can be used to get a general idea of places you might like to visit. It has nearly 1,000 pages, so even with the disproportionate coverage, it still provides a pretty good glimpse at a lot of the natural wonders around the world. And there are some pretty nice photos, though I do wish there was a photo of every place, rather than a photo of about 1 in every 2 or 3 places. Photos can say more about a natural wonder than a couple paragraphs of text. Hopefully, the authors will someday come out with a new edition with more photos and less biased coverage of places throughout the entire world.
Very highly recommended indeed
Customer Rating:
Some of the world's leading explorers lend their contributions and advice to the extensive travel reference 1001 NATURAL WONDERS YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE, which holds very nearly 1,000 pages packed with photos and descriptions of such wonders. From Loch Ness in Scotland to Lake Natron in Tanzania or Daisetsu in Japan, the world's wilderness places are all under one cover, with extensive descriptions charting why they stand out. While some of these places pepper other books, no other coverage is so extensive - or so well laid out, blending modern color photos with cultural and natural insights. Very highly recommended indeed; way above any other 'natural wonders' guides, and perfect for both armchair travelers and travel planners alike.
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