No comments about The Stones of Florence and Venice Observed (Penguin Modern Classics).

No comments about Ismail Merchant's Florence: Filming and Feasting in Tuscany.

1 comments about Time Out Florence: And the Best of Tuscany (Time Out Guides).

1. I went to Italy over the holiday after doing quite a bit of research with 4 or five different types of tour guides. these seemed great for their great history section and great "local" restaurant guides. But i couldn't find any of the streets found in the books. Im not sure if they are out of date or what, but we couldn't use any of the books suggestions. I also rain into another set of travelers from England who found the same problem. Stick to Rough Guides or Rick Steves. Those are at least correct and updated.

5 comments about Eyewitness Travel Guide to Florence and Tuscany.

1. On my trip to Florence last June, I equipped myself with a map and this book and it was all I needed. The book is informative and full of rich detail about every inch of Florence/Tuscany's landmarks, sights, restaurants, nightlife, etc. Mapped with detailed illustrations of Florence's many Renaissance churches, you can literally appreciate everything as you make your way through each one of them. Additionally, the book lends useful tips about public transportation and travel, hotel information and what to expect, etc.
   While useful in your travels, this is also one to keep handy in your personal library if you should ever need a brief cultural or historical reference. Sadly and finally, however, this book is no substitute for the real thing. Go to Florence!



2. This is an indispensable resource for the Tuscan visitor!

   What we found most helpful is this book's organization and insight to the sights in Florence and Tuscany. It really brings a spacial sense to the places so it was the most helpful planning source.

   Once you have your itinerary set out, you can use its encyclopediac format for useful information about hours of operation, fees, contact numbers, etc.

   However, it does not necessarily connect point a with point b. Other guides provide this sort of information which can be helpful if you are a bit uncertain how you will get about. Not a serious shortcoming, just be aware you need to do your own planning.

   I would recommend this guide over most others for its comprehenisve detail and effective graphics.




3. These DK guides are fantastic - we buy them for all of our destinations and pack them along with our other favourite books - the Michelan Green Guides. The DK books present glorious potted histories along with brilliant illustrations which bring the locations to life. Equal best because the book that goes in my back pocket is always the Michelan Green Guide - they fold in half and slip into the hip pocket whereas the DK book is too thick for that.

   Totally sold on these great books. Like the Michelans, they don't go out of date - history is just that.




4. If you plan to buy only one travel guide to Florence and Tuscany, this is the one. It provides an overview of all aspects of Florentine life and then proceeds to discuss the attractions in different sections of the city, complete with street maps. Major attractions are given several page spreads with open building diagrams from which you can determine where a particular painting or sculpture is within a building.
   
   Unfortunately, the coverage tends to be uneven. For instance, very little is said about the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, the museum that houses Michelangelo's second Pieta, Donatello's Mary Magdalene, and other significant sculpture by Donatello, della Robbia and others.
   
   The listings of hotels and restaurants are limited, and for our purposes, were of little use. Better to use a current version of a guide dedicated to those subjects.
   
   The best museum guides are the small inexpensive (about 8 euro) ones that are available at the major museums. These exist for the Academy, the Bargello, San Lorenzo, San Marco and the Museum of Archaeology. There is also an excellent, slightly larger guide to the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo that can be bought in their bookshop (You do not have to enter the museum to use the bookshop, which has a fine collection of books on Florence). We bought an entertaining and useful book there (Alta Mcadam's "Americans in Florence" [ISBN 88-09-013157-1]), which offers a series of walks with recommendations for sights restaurants, and hotels along the way. Unfortunately, it does not appear to be available in the U.S., although some of the same information may be available in the Guinti Guide to Florence.
   
   Also consider purchasing the Knopf Guide to Florence, which is less functional but has beautiful pictures of the city.
   
   The best map is the Knopf CityMap. Compact and very useful.
   
   Recommendation: Our most impressive and beautiful experience in Florence was attending the afternoon vespers in the crypt of San Miniato, at which the Benedictine monks sing Gregorian chants. It's as if you were taken back 1,000 years. Truly lovely. Every afternoon at 4:30.
   
   One last thing: Be sure to check the hours of the places you plan to visit. Many of the museums (e.g., the Bargello and the Medici Library) are only open during very short hours and only on certain days.



5. The Eyewitness series aren't my absolute favorite travel books but I do find them to be good references (if I'm ever bored in Florence, I can always read up on the difference species of roadside flowers or how a hummingbird hawk moth eats). I do like the fact that the books are crammed full of pictures (yes, even that pesky hawk moth is in there!). This is a good addition to any travel book library.
   --Vicki Landes, author of "Europe For The Senses - A Photographic Journal"

5 comments about Mediterranean Color: Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Greece.

1. Jeffrey's migration from architecht to painter now photographer has imbued his work with a unique sensibility. As a Becom collector Ihave come to appreciate the quality of his eye and the intensity of the Cibrachrome process of printing. I was quite delighted with Jeffrey's ability to write as well; though readers should know that this is primarily a photography book written by a photographer and his wife. He has several galleries around the world that show his work, and though expensive, his work is worth the price! I expectantly await his next book on similar topic, but location of South America. Long Live Jeffrey Becom



2. This book is about Architecture, Color, and how we see the world. It's not about how to be a tourist in the Mediterranean. Unless, of course, you would like to be a tourist who really "sees" what is in front of your eyes when you walk down that picturesque village street. Jeffrey Becom has a killer eye. His camera isolates a detail from our normal panoramic vision of a building or a street scene. When we contemplate this detail our sense of beauty, aesthetic organization, and how the world works is expanded. His capability to see these details while wandering the countries bordering the Mediterranean allows us normal humans a greater appreciation of the sensibilities of work-a-day Mediterannean peoples. The contemplation of Jeffrey Becom's work also inevitably causes us to look at our own world differently. I see things now when I walk down the street that I didn't see before I looked at Becom's work.



3. Wonderful book and great writing. Beautiful images of architecture, color and life. I highly reccomend. A must have for anyone who has traveled there or for anyone who dreams of doing so. Jeffrey Becom's photographs are a feast for the eyes and his tales are engrossing. One must also look at his other book Maya Color - stunning as well!



4. I bought this book looking for a lush picture book of inspiring photos of mediterranean homes. It is not. Although the photography is nice, it is primarily of colourful buildings abroad.



5. I was expecting a beautiful book of photos full of inspiring mediterranean colours. This book had a lot of text and wasn't what I expected. Might be interesting but haven't got the time to read it.

No comments about Lonely Planet Lo Mejor De Roma (Lonely Planet. (Spanish Guides)).

No comments about History & Mystery: Paris (History & Mystery).

2 comments about Lonely Planet Sardinia.

1. I bought this book because the reviews about Rough Guide were pretty bad, and I must say Lonely Planet delivered once again. It's full of "local" tips that must have taken the author a very long time to put together.
   A few more mini-maps would save dozens of lines of directions to reach those hidden places, and would save the reader a lot of time on the road.
   We would also have done with a few more places to stay and eat, but locals are so welcoming that it was a joy to ask them.
   These shortcoming anyway don't even erode one star, as the guide is otherwise exceptional. We didn't need anything else.



2. My boyfriend and I just got back from our trip to Sardinia. The Lonely Planet was helpful with some general information, but it was a bit dated (the new edition comes out May 2006 though). It did have a really good section on the food in Sardinia which mentally prepared us for a homecooked farewell dinner of baby goat! :) All in all, having the book was much better than nothing, but I'd recommend taking another guide book along to cross reference (which we did) or wait for the 2006 edition.

No comments about Amsterdam Spiral Guide (Aaa Spiral Guides).

3 comments about Microcosms (Panther).

1. This is a rather unusual book. Its genre is that of an essay collection, mixed with guide book, biographies and philosophy. The author tells us about his home town Trieste in north-eastern Italy and the surrounding regions: The inland and coast of Friuli (the region between Venice and Trieste), Piemonte in north-western Italy, the Istria peninsula in Slovenia/Croatia and Southern Tirol in northern Italy. All in all, border region where Italian, Slavic and German cultures meet and mix. The author describes places, landscapes, towns and villages in an intense, reflective and beautiful way, presents persons with interesting, moving, comic, poetic and tragic fates, teaches us some history (certainly not dry), tells some anecdotes, studies some literature and philosophises about landscapes, persons, culture and life itself. The tone changes between dark, poetic and humorous. The main theme of the book is how people live their lives in a microcosm where ways of thinking, language, traditions, and arts are influenced by many cultures and peoples, some gone and some still around. It pays homage to cultural diversity and warns against homogenizing and ethnic cleansing, as in the Yugoslavian Civil War, which the author describes as "the most silly of all wars", and which went on while this book was written. Personally I think the book was very interesting, rich, farsighted and with a very important theme. Sometimes I felt that there were too much philosophy, but it is rather simple and an important part of the book. It is a very European book, dealing with Europe's great heritage of both disastrous border disputes and rich cultural exchange across the borders. For Americans living within borders drawn officially drawn on the map with a ruler this book could be useful when it comes to understand the rich and tragic aspects of Europe's diverse ethnic heritage. But I recommend it to everybody who wants to enjoy a cultural journey to an exciting corner of Europe.



2. This is a wonderful, in-depth exploration of a corner of Europe that most people don't know exists. Over the centuries, Trieste and the surrounding region have been a cultural crossroads; as the border between Italy, Slovenia, and Austria shifted, the city was transformed from a rather sleepy backwater to a major port, and back again. This amalgam of cultural influences has made the region unique, and, as a native son, Magris offers an insider's perspective. But this isn't your average travel book; in a series of (mostly) short essays, he vividly portrays aspects of regional life ranging from the whimsical (the bear that never appears) to the gently ironic (Cafe San Marco) to the grim (memories of wars). In the final essay, where he envisions dying while walking in the city park, he revisits themes from most of the other essays and concludes with a memorable image of "life goes on." I found the book both enjoyable and enlightening as a glimpse into the Triestine mind-set, and I know I'll reread it.



3. A companion to "Danube," "Microcosms" extends Claudio Magris's visionary geography in excursions to places around Trieste: the Adriatic lagoons east of Venice, the Nevoso forest in Slovenia between Trieste and Fiume, the Collina countryside near Turin, the Croatian Apsyrtides archipelago in the Gulf of Quarnero south of Istria and the valley of Pusteria of the Tyrol. Magris enunciates his distinctive vision of geography in a memorable metaphor: "Place are bobbins where time is wound up upon itself. To write is to unravel these bobbins, to undo, like Penelope, the fabric of history. So it is perhaps not a complete waste of time to try to write something down." For Magris, a place is a complex foundation of existence that is an intricate genealogy of nature, time, history and fate.
   
   Each of the places of "Microcosms" has a striking meaning. For example, the Apsyrtides signify immortality or "the pure present moment that is enough in itself and does not tire itself out in the rush towards goals to be reached" or "happiness with no object" from which in "exile" in time "the individual who has lost the absolute seeks to replace it with remedies dreamed out of his own private squalor."The Nevoso embodies a remote mystery--of aeons of time and evanescence--from which we humans are inseparable and it leaves us in harmony with "the primordial inchoate, that pulls back into its womb all things and forms." One morning when the clearing of Pomocnjaki in the Nevoso is a "perfect cathedral of light," a roe suddenly appears and then disappears--"entering and fading in the impenetrable clarity"--magically freeing Magris from fear of death.
   
   Places in "Microcosms" are "wound" with feats of mind and spirit of wonderful lives finding meaning beyond fate. Magris extends lifted admiration and affection for those--like the great poet Biagio Marin who lived in Grado in the lagoons, Don Girotto the archpriest of Revigliasco and the academic and novelist Stefano Jacomuzzi of Cambiona in the Collina--whose lives and writings invoke "the big picture of the infinite, against which all human experience is set," foster the humility of "the smallness of oneself" and of "letting go," promote the conquest of the "vanity" of "taking oneself too seriously" and of "the obsession with impotence" of the "deliriums" of time and indicate a freedom from "fear" of "the vacuous pomp of the world" and above all of death.
   
   In a voice of the distilled wisdom of the ages, Magris tells us: "We die because we forget we are immortal." Without the humility of immortality, we succumb to vanity and death or "the darkness in which 'metaphors die'": "Perhaps this is original sin, the inability to live and love, to live time, each instant to the full, without craving to burn it up, to use it quickly. Original sin introduces death, which takes possession of life, making life seem unbearable in every hour it proffers in its passing, forcing the destruction of life's time, trying to make it pass quickly, like an illness; killing time, a polite form of suicide." A geographer such as the world has has not known, Magris irradiates the earth and residence on earth. "Microcosms" is a celebration of where and when and for whom time and death became immortality. In an existence in which "everything gets misplaced and lost" and "in the fear and the trembling with which life has to be faced" when one "does not know where to find the sense in the things [one] cannot grasp," such men, like "a shepherd to his flock" protecting his "sheep in the midst of wolves," are priceless overseers of wisdom owing to whom "one felt less alone in the shock and the turbulence of things."
   
   We turn the pages of this incomparable book page after great page blessed in the majesty of wisdom and compassion of Claudio Magris and the wonder of post-generic creativity of his book and with the uplifting realization that what we are really holding in our hands is a value of existence in whose fold we are "less alone in the shock and the turbulence of things."