1 comments about Mumbai, India.

1. Excellent map, very happy with the detail. My only issue is that the detailed portion of the map does not extend all the way to Greater Mumbai.

1 comments about Persian Pictures (Anthem Travel Classics).

1. You are probably not purchasing this book unless you have read Desert Queen, the biography of Gertrude Bell. Because she was a photographer, in addition to her many other talents, I mistakenly assumed this was a photographic book. Instead, it is her fascinating first hand account of her love affair with Persia. An educated woman and a keen observer; read this book if you are looking for an in depth, personal understanding of the Middle east in the early 1900's.

1 comments about Introduction to Japanese Culture.

1. I had to buy this book for my Japanese Culture class in college. It's not a typical textbook. I often found myself reading beyond what I was supposed to because there are so many interesting things about Japan.
   
   I'd recommend it to anyone who plans on visiting Japan or is just interested in their culture.

2 comments about Early Mapping of Southeast Asia.

1. Black and white and color maps accompany extensive text references in this survey of early maps of Southeast Asia. While this might prove a very specific guide for Asian collections, cartography and art libraries will also want to consider its value: Suarez provides an excellent history of the region and its geographical importance, examining the history of its representation and exploration.



2. The idea that we live in an "information economy" is much less of a novelty than the computer geeks and business gurus would have it. For proof, consider "The Early Mapping of Southeast Asia," a history of economics, ideology and adventure masquerading as a gorgeous coffee table book.
   The key piece of information was the route to the fabulously (and actually) rich Spice Islands. The story of how Europe evaded the Moslem blockade and reached both India and the undiscovered Americas in the 1490s has been often told. Seldom, however, has the Europe-Southeast Asia story been told from such a comprehensive viewpoint as Thomas Suarez'.
   He starts at the very beginning. At a time Christian maps showed a simple T inside an O to divide the three continents, several Southeast Asian societies were drawing their own maps inspired by religious cosmology.
   The Thais called these maps of the universe cakkavala, but other peoples had something similar. At the center, instead of Jerusalem, was Mount Sumeru, the link between earth and heaven.
   In Europe, Ptolemy speculated that Africa curved around to meet the Asian mainland, which would have made the Indian Ocean into a closed sea like the Mediterranean. As a result, for centuries no one considered traveling around Africa to the Spiceries. (It appears no one considered whether the outside of this mythical barrier might have been worthwhile to reach.)
   Ptolemy's barrier had its skeptics, and some correct information was available in Europe, primarily itineraries (like Marco Polo's) rather than maps. But it proved difficult to separate the reliable from the misconceived.
   As Suarez shows, Europeans eventually figured out that there were two big peninsulas jutting south from Asia, India and Southeast Asia.
   But because of confusion, which only increased when Columbus discovered the Americas, some geographers decided there were three peninsulas. Others moved Asian cities as far as the coast of Peru.
   It didn't help that Columbus struck the biggest concentration of islands in the New World. Europeans already knew Southeast Asia was full of islands. So for quite a while, the West Indies were believed to be the East Indies.
   Until the Portuguese actually got there around 1500, Europeans were sadly mistaken about even the biggest features of Southeast Asian geography. For centuries, Ceylon and Sumatra were confused, and some mapmakers doubted the existence of Java.
   However, once the science-minded Europeans arrived, the situation cleared up dramatically. In about a century the major questions were resolved. During the same period -- 1500 to the late 1600s, printed maps started replacing manuscript charts. (Most old maps and prints that survive today were bound in books or atlases. Loose sheets tended to be destroyed.)
   From an early date, some Southeast Asian kings took a sophisticated interest in Western mapping, but many of them held a completely different idea of political boundaries.
   In an odd twist, the sovereigns in Thailand, especially, took up modern scientific mapping as a defense against British expansionism through Burma in the 19th century.
   The local kings, says Suarez, did not have a concept of definite political borders. Big states exercised decreasing levels of control over more and more distant dependencies, signified by more or less regular payments of tribute, not lines on paper.
   If the locals were puzzled by the strange habits of the British, they learned quickly.
   Suarez says it was a mistake on the European maps that helped Thailand evade colonial conquest until the Japanese came in 1942. Because longitudes were uncertain, both the British and the French thought Thailand was much narrower, east to west, than it really is. So small, it was not worth conquering.
   "Early Mapping of Southeast Asia" is both an eye-popping and an eye-opening book. It has lots of maps, many in color; and lots of curious adventures, surprising discoveries and seldom-heard tales from the eastern side of the east-west divide.
   It has a splendid companion, 'The Early Mapping of the Pacific,' which I have also reviewed.

No comments about India Chic (Chic Destination).

5 comments about Give Me the World (Adventura Books).

1. Leila Hadley is one of the most descriptive writers of our time. Her words leap off the page and take you inside the story to enjoy her travels, right alongside her. "Give Me the World" is so much more than a travel log or journal. Ms. Hadley invites you along as her guest and urges you to see and feel what she has experienced, to be a part of her journey. You come away with an intimate knowledge of the Far East, as much as if you had seen it all yourself. I enjoyed my time in Bombay,Bangkok, and Singapore and recommend it to anyone who has a spirit of adventure. "Give Me the World" was an experience not to be missed.



2. FIVE STARS. This book is one of the most enjoyable reads I've had in a long time. A travel memoir so vibrant and alive, it's hard to believe it was written fifty years ago, by a writer who was then in her twenties. So much fun to read - impossible to put down.



3. Written in 1958 and out of print for more than 25 years, Hadley's timeless story of traveling the Far East enchants the reader with the beauty and clarity of the writing, its confiding tone and the author's honesty and enthusiasm.
   
   But Hadley, 25, divorced, and the mother of a six-year-old boy, is assailed with doubts when she finally boards the cargo ship that will bear her and Kippy to Manila and Hong Kong. Dissatisfied with her life as a public relations executive in New York, "which seemed to claim from me barely more than an acceptance" she had expected departure to confer immediate elation. It doesn't and tossing off the smart scarlet coat "that still wasn't paid for," she frets that "all my preconceived ideas would turn out the same way, flattening with experience into dim shadows."
   
   She needn't have worried. Relaxing into the unstructured languor of shipboard life, invigorated by Kippy, "artless, untroubled and reacting in accord to a single heart and a single mind," her sense of wonder blossoms. Hadley has a gift for description, for making the sights, sounds and smells she perceives come alive in the reader's mind.
   
   In Manila and then Hong Kong, everything fascinates her - the rooms, the people, the sights, the food. She remarks guiltlessly on the service. "I felt too light-headed and too comfortable to reflect philosophically on the social implications of cheap labor" and marvels at the oddities in the food market. "Centuries of famine and overpopulation have driven the Chinese to experimental extremes in nourishment....Nevertheless...I prefer Chinese food to French - it's prettier, the flavor is more subtle, and it's much less fattening." Treated to a restaurant banquet, she gamely tries everything. "Until I had almost eaten the last of them, I didn't realize that the lima beans were newborn mice coated with honey."
   
   Hadley is easy with people (most of the boors she runs across are Americans), with a blithe expectation of mutual respect which seems to work. Though most helpful acquaintances are men the prospect of inappropriate sexual advances is scarcely mentioned except for one tongue-in-cheek, "as I was protected by a small child instead of a husband."
   
   It's one of those ugly Americans who, in Bangkok, introduces her to the California, a schooner which seizes her imagination and becomes the real soul of her trip. "How wonderful to travel with uncertainty...to come slowly and quietly to places where there were things you did not know." After three and half years the four American crewmembers are a close unit and want no part of a woman's disruptive influence. Though Hadley begs and pleads for them to take her to Singapore, they refuse.
   
   But when she and Kippy show up at the docks in Singapore, they capitulate. Hadley has a rare gift for visceral communication. With her we feel the efficient organization of the boat, the camaraderie among the crew, the damp, the lousy food, the accumulation of grime and salt on skin, the harsh rasp of a moldy cigarette, the heart-soaring joy of being aboard.
   
   She takes a keen interest in getting to know the crew, surprised at how their disparate personalities contribute to shipboard harmony. Kippy's easy acceptance of everything new, from a delightful shower of squid to the draconian rule that he remain silent during all meals, charms without resorting to cuteness.
   
   The difficulties of everyday tasks, from using the head to preparing a meal are described with good-natured humor and her description of their attempts to teach her to sail are hilarious. Coming into an anchorage one day, the crew takes down the sails. "I smiled to myself, because I finally knew what the Genny meant. It was the general term aboard for the Genoa jib, which I thought was a beautiful name for a sail."
   
   In each port Hadley takes everything in, letting sights, sounds and smells sink into her. Kippy finds sightseeing with his mother boring but will tag behind the crew endlessly. Hadley conveys the bustle and crowds and smells of Eastern markets, the Tamil's annual painful penance day, the luxury of a bath.
   
   On her customary dawn watch she reflects: "On land there was such an infinite variety of people and things over which my consciousness could flow, but now all my consciousness and senses were suddenly confined and focused on the minute area of a schooner...a universe that I could walk around in seconds."
   
   In Ceylon her stint was over, to be resumed again in Beirut, five months later after an interlude amid the wonder and squalor of India. Though she is dazzled by a meeting with Indira Gandhi, it's Kippy's amah, Lucy, who becomes the complex embodiment of India. The quirks, customs and personalities of individuals and the happenstance of traveling, whether it be the aftermath of a violent dust storm or the intricacies of bargaining or the play of light on the Taj Mahal, hold her attention in the moment.
   
   Though Hadley is open to people and seems to expect (and get) the best from locals, she does not hesitate to vent disapproval or dislike. But when she gets to Beirut and meets the usurper George, the fussy provisional addition to the California crew, she pounces. Describing his British tropic regimentals, she conveys a prig. "He was talking to the colonel in French and emitting little neighing laughs at the colonels remarks."
   
   Unabashedly jealous, Hadley's rancor is checked only by occasional defensiveness and, later, by the need for harmony aboard. Hilariously funny, her behavior for the first time emphasizes her youth and, perversely, her femininity as George is always prodding her to dress up and try new hairstyles. And then there's the meeting with the American destroyer in Rhodes which rings perfectly true and perfectly evokes one of the better `50s comedy movies.
   
   All too soon, the trip comes to an end. Hadley had expected to return to New York fresh and eager but feels instead as if "I had suffered metamorphosis in reverse, a butterfly become a caterpillar."
   
   "Like love, travel is absorbing. Everything else withdraws to make room for its emotional demands and the expansion of one's senses."
   
   And she has one more surprise in store for the reader, a shock, which on reflection, seems perfectly in character.



4. This was a great read. It was not a quick read, but fascinating! I loved that she added on extra information at the end so you know what happened after the sailing trip ended. I highly recommend this.



5. I'm on page 58 and I'm not sure I'll get much farther. The book is full of physical descriptions, but the author, herself, seems distant. Traveling with a six year old should seem significant, but Kippy's impact on the traveling experience has gotten little attention. I'm not convinced of her feelings about the places she visits, either. Too dull for me.
   
   To compare: I really enjoyed KITE STRINGS OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS and TALES OF A FEMALE NOMAD. I finished Without Reservations, but liked it less than the first two books.

1 comments about Travels in Persia, 1673-1677.

1. I purchased this book in hopes of not being able to put it down,not so. It is truly written for it's time. Endless words of appreciations of the king, master, and so on. A well traveled man indeed, but where was Persia in all of these pages? Chardin, writes some interesting anecdotes about the Iranian society in the 1600's, that are quit interesting, like the Romanian dancing boys and coffee shops, along with the generosities of the king. It's worth looking over simply for these point.

No comments about A Look at Vietnam (Our World (Pebble Books)).

3 comments about A Field Guide to the Birds of Borneo, Sumatra, Java, and Bali: The Greater Sunda Islands.

1. Many newer guides have been published about birds of this region, but this book still deserves its place on the bookshelf of anyone interested in birds of South-east Asia. Illustrations are good, and descriptions are detailed and mostly accurate. A bit bulky to carry in the field, but not a problem if you bring it in a backpack. The situation with forest fires in South-east Asia (especially Indonesia) is growing worse each year, so get out there and see some of these extraordinary birds while you still can!



2. This was the book that everyone who seemed to be serious used in Borneo, but if you are going to be out in the bush for more than a few days and make frequent use of field guides, consider having it re-bound before you leave -- many people I passed along the way were finding that the plate pages were starting to fall out.



3. Any serious birder to the listed regions of this book would buy this book.

   It is the best guide of the region so far with excellent plates and useful details. What I find especially useful, particularly for the raptors, is that they show illustrations of the birds in flight.

   The drawings appear consistent and the bird's information at the back of the book is easy to access.

   The birds are categorised according to their family which definately makes for faster checks and identification, which I find important when in the field.

   The spine of the book though is a little week and you might want to have it rebound before it falls apart - especially with all the browsing that is to be.

2 comments about Kyoto: A Cultural History (Cityscapes).

1. When you write a book in praise of Kyoto, it's hard to go wrong by me. This fine and refined metropolis--formerly Japan's political capital and (sorry Tokyo) always and ever its cultural capital--is in all honesty one of my favorite places on earth, and back when I lived in Japan nary a month would go by that I wouldn't visit it at least once. Back here in the States that's not really possible, unfortunately, and so it's quite a delight to at least be able to revisit Kyoto through the pages of this brief but heartfelt cultural history.
   
   The author has lived and worked in Kyoto for a long time as a professor of British Studies at Ryukoku University, and so has a deft first-hand familiarity with the city along with an obvious deep affection and enthusiasm for the place, all of which he unselfishly shares with the reader. On the other hand, since this is not his primary scholarly field, he has taken a vast store of variously scattered expert studies and translated primary sources and weaved these together with his own anecdotal accounts, memories, and impressions; some might dismiss this as "unoriginal" but to read so widely and then handpick the relevant portions and craft them into a coherent narrative that's personal, personable, entertaining, and informative all in one is no mean feat and is nothing to sneeze at. That said, the parts where he digressed to discuss his own experiences of Kyoto were often the parts that really shone for me as a reader, as these were often perceptive and thought-provoking as well as sometimes funny--and speaking of funny, the author has a wonderful penchant for lame puns and silly jokes that add a certain fatherly charm to the prose.
   
   As a whole the book is well-organized, moving along chronologically from the city's founding in 794 to modern times, discussing the characteristic cultural contributions of Kyoto distinctive to each era of Japanese history often with one as the primary focus ("The Tale of Genji", the schools of Buddhism, court verse, Zen, Noh drama, decorative art, the way of Tea, haiku, geisha, cinema, and the modern novel (those by Tanizaki, Mishima, and Kawabata)). The sociopolitical history of the city is also addressed properly, mostly as it is relevant to changes and shifts in cultural history, of course. He has a surefire respect for tradition but can also take the city's modern developments in stride--this is a living, breathing city after all and not a large sprawling museum. The only drawback is that there are a few inaccuracies in the chapter on Buddhism, some glaring (Dainichi is most certainly NOT the Buddha "who created all things"--there is no creator Buddha in Buddhism, nor any creation per se) and some merely nitpicky or just semantically misleading. Nothing a little further reading won't straighten up, though, and the ins and outs of Buddhism are not the main topic at hand, so these inaccuracies are not a mortal sin really, just a minor annoyance if you happen to know better.
   
   The book is written in a very accessible, straightforwardly casual prose style that is ideal for someone unfamiliar with Japan and its cultural capital and still enjoyable for a frequent visitor or resident--also perfect for reading during one's long commute by train or bus. A word of warning though to prospective buyers: the book's cover somehow makes it look like a guidebook, and this is misleading. It makes no attempt to outline key places, hours of operation, and transportation. It's not even organized by site as other similar titles are (such as Mosher's great contemplative guide: Kyoto: A Contemplative Guide) though reading it might give you a few hints of places you might want to check out. On the other hand, if you plan on visiting Kyoto as a tourist this book would be a great and user-friendly way to place all of the detailed data from your guidebook(s) into an overall context and framework and you'd doubtlessly get a whole lot more out of your trip thereby. And if you're stuck somewhere else wishing you were in Kyoto like me, this book is a reliable way to take a little trip there in spirit.



2. I read this book on a stay in Kyoto and found it helpful in looking at Kyoto from a deeper point of view. It had an interesting angle in presenting Kyoto and it's different aspects. Conceptually it's well put together, but the author throws in personal comments that aren't needed, such as how his knee is damaged so he can't participate in the Tea Ceremony, even though he loves it. Also Japanese spelling of the same thing will change in the book. If this book was peer-reviewed a few more times then published I think it would be much better; maybe on the second publishing...