2 comments about Ireland: A Photographic Tour.

1. Masterfully photographed, and printed on high quality paper, this book is a must have for any armchair traveller.
   The book provides a map of the region on the inside cover, and then follows a brief and informative historical overview, which introduces the region to the reader. From that point onwards the book consists of one splendid photograph after the other, very often on a full page, or even spread over double pages, all with short descriptions to accompany them. The book depicts rural country scenes as well as historical landmarks, grand vistas to great architectural photos and even prominent statues. In short, everything the region has to offer.
   I am also the proud owner of New England (Photographic Tour) by the same author and photographer and as such, I can highly recommend any one of the books in this series.



2. I purchased this book as a gift and was so impressed I had to buy one for myself! Photography which captures the distinct and rare beauty of Ireland and well-written text that describes and explains the many points of interest found in Ireland. If you've never been to Ireland this book will make you plan a holiday. If Ireland is already a favourite place to visit reading this book will make you want to return. High quality binding.

5 comments about Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle.

1. What a find! I'm amazed Dervla Murphy is not much better known. She has such an appealing vigor and zeal for adventure, combined with an acute eye for cultural observation and a rich capacity for description. Dervla takes one of the most audacious trips I've ever heard of, and undergoes some of the most harrowing and arduous of trials with non-showoff-y courage, such as when three heavy objects that turn out to be wolves fling themselves at her on a dark deserted road in the Balkans, or she is awakened in the middle of the night to find a "scantily dressed Kurd" standing over her bed. (In both instances her pocket pistol dispatched the dilemma without further ado.) Not only are these accounts riproaring, but she so warmly and affectionately describes the so-called "undeveloped" cultures she grows to know as she passes through remote stretches of Afganistan and Pakistan, that she quite awakens a First World reader to the narrowness of our outlook.



2. I first read this book in the sixties in grade school. I bought the reissued edition, rediscovering it by coincidence. Ms. Murphy's journey in the early sixties is, if anything, more fascinating to read today in light of the changes in the Middle East since she travelled there. Her independence and cheerful acceptance of different cultures is refreshing. This book was written prior to the 'me' decade, and while intensely personal, lacks the self-preoccupation that more recent writers practice.

   Additionally, unlike so many bicycle travelogues, this book doesn't focus on the author's bicycle! The focus remains on the journey, which renders it excellent reading for all, not just bicyclists.

   This is a timeless read and one that can be revisited with pleasure.




3. It was by accident I discovered this book, but how fortunate it was! Murphy did not just ride a bicycle from Ireland to India, impressive in itself, but she lived and laughed and played with the Prince's and Peasants she met through out her journey. Her descriptions of the people she meets and the ancient lands she cross are simple and magical.

   Some of her experiences seem to belong to fairy tales, other's remind's one of Arabian Nights, and at other times, it seemed Murphy was whisked into Tolkien's land of Middle Earth with fierce and gallant warriors on horseback.

   I will quote a couple of passages which highlight her sense of humor and observation.

   "...But it was worth it all to rise gradually from that fertile, warm valley to the still, cold splendour of the snow-line, where the highest peaks of the Hindu Kush crowd the horizon in every direction and one begins to understand why some people believe that gods live on mountain tops."

   "...when suddenly I came on the most unexpected sight-a playing field complete with twenty-two youths and a soccer ball. I know very little about soccer, but enough to know this is how it is not played. No one ever moved about trotting speed, no one ever tried to tackle anyone else, the referee never used his whistle, the ball was never headed and the two goalies sat crosslegged between the posts most of the time, looking abstracted. The real excitement from a spectator's point of view was caused by the fact that one side of the field had a sheer drop of 200 feet, so that the main object of all the players was to keep the ball from going into the ravine rather than to kick it between the posts."




4. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Murphy's humor, tenacity and bravery are awe inspiring. She's attacked by wolves (or possibly wild dogs), wakes up in a tent after going to sleep out in the open, fends off an attempted rapist and has many other thrilling adventures. In one instance, when there are nefarious characters about, she is advised to booby trap her inn bedroom's doorway with empty bottles. In her journal, she calmly notes that emptying bottles is the one thing she's really good at.
   
   I couldn't help feeling sad while reading this book. In 1965, when this book was published, most people were probably unfamiliar places like Kabul and Jalalabad. Now, of course, in the wake of the post-9/11 bombing of Afghanistan, Kabul is a household word. Turns out, that city was once breathtakingly beautiful, as well as the country around it. Murphy's trek takes her through Afghanistan at a time when the USSR and the US were vying for control of this country. The Russians were busy providing electricity and importing goods, while the Americans seemed to approach this ancient country with the intent to raze the traditional culture to the ground and replace it with a modern one. One wonders if, if both countries had never meddled with Afghanistan, there might never have been the Taliban? In any event, this book takes the reader back to a truly relevant experience of the not-so distant past.



5. This is an amazing book, by a wonderful author. I would highly recommend reading it.

No comments about Michelin Great Britain & Ireland Tourist and Motoring Atlas (Michelin Tourist and Motoring Atlas : Great Britain & Ireland).

5 comments about The Road from the Past: Traveling through History in France.

1. As my wife and I prepare to go to France (Dordogne) for a walking tour with 'Country Walkers', we were advised to read up on French history. This book was recommended. What a great read! I just searched Amazon for more books by the same author and was dissappointed to see that she has no more listed. I would love to travel to France with her. Karen Brown, beware!!



2. 
   Despite the her extensive bibilography at the end of the book, Caro's research is at best superficial. In fact, she seems to have relied a great deal on the Michelin guide to the Dordogne. The author also has a tendency to insert herself into the story in an annoyingly coy manner. Not recommended.



3. Caro's guide is unique and she provided me suggestions about places to see, and not see, that were very helpful. Some other reviewers were annoyed with her personal travel narratives, but I found them interesting. Her method of how to visit France, by traveling though its history chronologically was very good. In the end, I was able to use her book as the basis for planning my own two week trip. I am a college history professor, and her insights and recommendations about how to travel were very helpful.



4. We are planning our second long driving tour of France, and having visited many of the places she details, have found Ina Caro's book to be engaging and immensely informative. I like being able to place "sights seen" in an historic perspective and this book is genius at doing just that. Now I've purchased my own copy -- having renewed the library version twice this Spring, and having read it prior to our 2003 trip as well. We don't need guidebooks to help us find hotels or restaurants anymore. THIS is my kind of guidebook, and it will never be "out-of-date!"



5. Being an avid reader of travel essays and an admitted francophile, I thoroughly enjoyed Ms. Caro's book. Her suggested travel method of combining history and architecture is brillant. I've read about the historical events she details in her book, but I had never read about the details of those same events being paired with the architecture of the period. Ms. Caro also does an excellent job of lending insight to the often-unknown dramas accompanying the locales she visits. A must-read for anyone interested in French history, chateaux, or arm-chair travel! As an added bonus, Ms. Caro has even included her own travel tips and recommended hotels and restaurants.

5 comments about Berlin: Portrait of a City.

1. I left Berlin, early in 1937, aged five and a half, not to return until 1983, as a visitor, but I have childhood memories of the city, some of which go back to before I was three. Reinforcing those memories were tales I heard from my parents and the occasional, non-war-related movie. To see pictures of the streets and the faces, the clothing and the shop displays going back to before the First World War has been a source of continuing fascination for me. As is only proper in a book of this sort, the horrors that beset Berlin under Hitler and during the Second World War are also given their proper place in this book, a reminder that even one of the world's most sophisticated cities can be all but destroyed in degeneration and nevertheless, with appropriate assistance, as, for instance, the air lift, be resurected and restored. The photos were excellent, and the commentary, in English, German and French, insightful and instructive. Priced in the mid-thirties, the book sold at a substantially lower price than it did at New York's Museum of Modern Art.



2. I purchased this as a gift for my little (20 yo) brother's birthday. He was born in Berlin. First of all this book is HUGE! I love that the explanations of the pictures are written not only in English, but in German. What a fantastic masterpiece.



3. What a book! My mother as well as her sisters were born in Berlin during and after World War II, so I grew up hearing family stories of this amazing city. This book provided a tremendous visual aid to all these stories. Looking at the images I could picture my grandmother as a young woman, and my aunts and my mother in the postwar years.
   If you have any connection to this amazing city, this book will bring tears to your eyes, for all the hardship and challenges it has faced, and with what fantastic grace it reemerged like phoenix from the ashes.



4. This is a beautiful book! The photos are not only outstanding but they have zero pixillation. You can discern details such as the company name on the back of a horse drawn cart in a crowd. The turn of the century through the 1930's I thought were the best. You can stare at one and with out much effort find yourself slipping away into the photo.
   
   The National Socialist period is not covered in depth nor do I think it needs to be. There are far an away plenty of books for that on the market. This is a book that can not be digested in one sitting. Take your time and look at each photo. The small details are fascinating.
   
   My only problem with the book is the blue page stock that some of the entries is written on. It made it difficult to read the text. That is a minor quibble, especially in a book like this. If you buy a used copy make sure you check the price of shipping as this book weighs as much as a small childs school backpack.



5. A great book and great pictures. Berlin has deeply changed in the last 150 years and all this has been documented precisely by great photographers: this the easiest way to show how. Texts are exhaustive too into describing "typical" life of a city.
   Maybe Berlin has changed more in the last two decades then ever before: the last chapter of this book could be more fascinating and explorative, including the fact that there are a lot of pictures about it but it'd had took another book, perhaps. Maybe Berlin has changed again yet and is changing again now... so I'm waiting for a second edition.

3 comments about Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine.

1. Professor Omer Bartov's holocaustic travelogue in the Western Ukraine has been published just when the US Congress is about to pretend that the Armenian Genocide of 1915 did not happen, lest Turkish nationalism be offended. Bartov has visited the Western Ukraine, once called Eastern Galicia, where all memory of centuries of Polish rule and Polish and Jewish habitation has been virtually ignored and erased.
   
   Of all the countries occupied in WWII by the Nazis Ukraine was the most enthusiastic about being liberated from the Soviets and the most eager to help kill as many Jews as possible. Clearly this was the result of the weakness of Ukrainian nationalism and its perceived need to cleanse its territory ethnically of Poles and Jews whose long history there compromised the integrity of the newly nationalistic Ukrainians. Something similar could be found in Lithuania and Latvia, but what this reminds me of the most is the Turkish refusal to recognize that over one million Armenians were killed through the policies of the Ottoman government during WWI. If Bartov visited Eastern Turkey, the homeland of the Armenians, he would find denial by both Turkish officials and the indigenous Kurd population, both of which cannot accept that Armenians ever existed there.
   
   Nationalism is a deadly poison and the Jews and Armenians have been its most notable victims. Pity, then, that Zionists also have to pretend there was no Armenian genocide lest its Turkish friends take umbrage, and that Armenians have persisted in their pro-Arab stance in the Middle East long after it had any real utility for them.
   
   The ruling castes of the world one hundred years ago feared class warfare above all. Little did they know that nationalistic not socialist hatreds would be the most devastating for peace and security.
   
   Bartov is a well respected scholar of the Holocaust and his visit to the new Ukrainian nation is very illuminating. Let us hope the Ukrainians some day get to feel secure enough to face the truth about what they have done in the name of their nation.



2. I was prepared to like this book better, as I have a strong interest in Jewish life in Eastern Galicia (present-day West Ukraine) and have traveled in this area. I agree with the author's main theory that for present-day Ukrainians to truly memorialize Jews who are no longer among them, they would need to deal with the role some Ukrainians had in the massacre of the Jews. So instead they memorialize Ukrainian nationalists. I found the book somewhat repetitive, with the situation being roughly the same in each place the author visited. It also wasn't clear why the author picked these particular places to visit and not others. I hope this upcoming book on one particular village will be better, as it will allow him to go more in-depth.



3. For a long time Galicia was a 'hotbed' of nationalism and this book shows the ramifications of that. I am from a city that is, according to the author, part of Galicia but it is not one of the cities he traveled to and wrote about in the book, sadly. I would have been quite interested to read his take on what happened to this city after the war, etc.
   
   Overall, as another reviewer has said, the book is at times repetitive. What readers will notice is that for the most part in practically every city Ukrainians partook in the pogroms or murders of Jews from the beginning days of the German occupation. Few, on the other hand, tried to save Jews. One can argue that they had no time to save Jews as they were looking out for themselves, yet that does not go a long way in explaining why so many were implicit in their deaths.
   
   Today all the memorials erected to commemorate the suffering and death of the Jewish people are overlooked or forgotten about, in their place have sprung up dozens of monuments to Ukrainian nationalists, many of them guilty of mass murder and anti-Semitism. It should be mentioned that during the Soviet era the Holocaust was not mentioned, the Soviets did not want to single out any one group of people (commendable in some respects but not realistic or to a degree honest) and most of the memorials do not mention which group died but rather you will find them saying that so many 'Soviet citizens' died/were murdered, etc. It seems that it will be a long while, if ever, before Ukraine and Ukrainians can come to grips with their past in regards to WWII and the Holocaust.
   
   Overall the book is an interesting read because one can get a glimpse of the exact same thing happening in every village/town/city, one after another. It is not a natural phenomenon, I'm sure to a degree it is part of a state sponsored program to erase the Ukrainian past during WWII in regards to the Holocaust and replace it with heroic nationalistic characters like Stepan Bandera.

4 comments about Frommer's Road Atlas Ireland (Road Atlas).

1. The print and use of color makes these maps very easy to use, and let's me set off on my trips with confidence that I'll have a relatively easy time navigating to where I need to be. Details like diagrams of ferry ports and possibly confusing bypasses are a wonderful addition. The spiral binding and pages are high-quality and stand up to a lot of use. A must-have on any roadtrip.



2. You need this atlas if you are going to drive yourself around Ireland. The maps are easy to read and finely detailed. Many of the names are given in both English and Irish (Gaelic); this is essential because many road signs are now in Gaelic. With the Atlas in hand you will be able to figure out where you are, and you will also develop a feel for Gaelic spelling and pronunciation.



3. very easy to follow - a must if you are planning to drive in Ireland



4. This seems like it may be out of print. (That's what it says on many other websites, and Amazon kept delaying and delaying my order, until I cancelled it today.)
   
   Since I was going to Ireland soon, and feared this would not get to me in time, I ordered the newer AA Road Atlas Ireland (by "AA Publishing") that Amazon also sells. I just got that today, and comparing it against the "Search Inside" sample pages of this, it appears that these two Ireland road atlases are identical on EVERY SINGLE page that the "Search Inside" shows, except for the front and back cover. (The maps divide at the exact same points, have the same colors and dual language names, etc.) The only other difference I see is that the AA Road Atlas Ireland is not spiral bound like this one was. (And though you can't see it in the sample pages, the AA Road Atlas has been updated more recently, in terms of roads under construction and such.)
   
   Therefore, if you wanted this but are unable to successfully order it (or just want to get the same content faster), I suggest you look at the AA Road Atlas Ireland.

5 comments about The Rough Guide to Ireland 8 (Rough Guide Travel Guides).

1. I was weaned on the Blue Guides when I first did international travel. I loved the detail about towns and historic sites in those guides along with the suggested tours. The Rough Guide lived up to this standard for me. It provided a good level of detail to enjoy our touring with an organzization of the information that made sense.



2. This was the 3rd "Rough Guide" I've used, and in my opinion they are the best resources for travel to new countries. They not only cover the "standard" areas and sites in detail - including a good range of lodging and dining options - but also take you off the beaten track, exposing nice gems not covered in other books.
   
   If you like to really EXPLORE a country, rather than find the next good shopping area or find the most economical place to sleep, this book and ALL of the "Rough Guides" are for you!



3. This is the first Rough Guide I've purchased, and I'll be looking for more in the series. I like the way the guide is structured, by county and town/smaller area, with attractions described in detail enough for a reader to decide whether or not to see them.



4. I used this book for a 10-day driving trip around Ireland with my mom. My mom had brought Frommer's and Fodor's guide books, and we kept coming back to the Rough Guide. I'd used my first Rough Guide in Ecuador and loved it. What I love is that they cover everything, not just the tourist traps that the "mainstream" guide books do. The book's recommendations are right on and they have information on even the most out-of-the-way places. The book's best suggestion was climbing Mount Errigal - quite a hike, but so worth it.
   
   Even the maps in the book are excellent. We ended up using the Rough Guide maps combined with a tourist map we got at the aiport for a large-scale view of the country. The Michelin driving map we brought ended up being too complicated to use.
   
   After several great experiences with them, Rough Guides are now my guide book of choice. You won't be disappointed with this one!



5. I am traveling to Ireland soon, and found myself in need of a Rough Guide-- because no one else does it better. So far its been instrumental in planning my trip: from arrival in the Southern port cities to a trip around the Ring of Kerry to our planned stay in Dublin, its the starting point in accounting for lodging, restaurants, and activities. No guide can encapsulate the entire country they're "guiding" you through, but the very best give you a great sense of where and how to begin engaging with the country or countries in question and the Rough Guide typically does this with aplomb. I'm also headed to Britain on this trip too, and trust-- I've got the Rough Guide for Britain, too. Laurence West

2 comments about Pocket Map and Guide Dublin (EYEWITNESS TRAVEL GUIDE).

1. I used this for my St. Patty's trip March 2008 and it was quite useful, especially the maps segregated by area. You can geographically plan your outings and cross things off your list easily. The info provided is brief so I used the bigger DK Dublin book as a supplement but used the actual pocket size on my trip. I also read 2 other pocket guides and found this was the most useful because of the maps, which help when you get temporarily lost. I love it because it is TINY! and the map was extremely useful marked with train stops as well. I wish it had a bus route map too, but I got on fine with taxis since we were a group of five. Travel by taxi within 2 miles of the city is about 8-10 euros for us 5. Only negative, wish it had more daytrip info i.e. Blarney stone and how to get to those day trips. Otherwise, for Dublin alone I couldn't have survived the trip without this book because it really helps cover each area systematically, good when you're pressed for time.



2. I hope this is more useful on my trip to Ireland rather than now. Its limited information has me cross-referencing with my full-size DK Ireland book.

2 comments about Berlin Then and Now (Then & Now Thunder Bay).

1. This book is a good size, and photos are given full priority on each page. It's kept nice and simple with old on the left, new on the right, and with just as much informed commentary as you'd need running along beneath.
   
   Only a few of the 'then' pics are from the 50s and 60s; the majority show the Berlin streets as they were before the devastation of the Second World War, and as such are as fascinating as looking at pictures of ancient Rome.
   
   An excellent book from an excellent series.



2. All I can say is awesome.I did a now and then tour of Berlin last year in October and I can only wish that I had the book with me then. There is nothing like knowing where you stand if you are a history buff on ww2 like I am. Going over to do the Bulge at the end of April. Berlin Then and Now is money well spent.
   Greg
   greg@54.co.za