1001 Historic Sites You Must See Before You Die (Hardcover)

~ Richard Cavendish (Editor), Koichiro Matsuura (Preface)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this thick travel guide, Cavendish, a veteran travel writer and columnist for History Today magazine, assigns readers enough must-see agendas to fill several lifetimes. Well-organized by region and graced with thorough historical descriptions of each locale, this volume's impressive range incorporates everything from typical tourist destinations like Westminster Abbey, the Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China, as well as unusual spots like the A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, Guinness Brewery in Dublin, and the Mercedes-Benz Factory in Stuttgart, Germany. What's missing is the information a tourist would need actually to visit these sites: directions, hours of operation, and other handy tips are overlooked. Probably too heavy handed for a casual tourist, this guide would be most useful for the experienced traveler or history buff.
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Review

From the Kirkus Reviews Feature interview with Richard Cavendish:




It begins in Dawson

City, a small town

in Canada that

birthed the Klondike

Gold Rush. It ends

with the imposing

stone heads that dominate

Easter Island’s

Rapa Nui National

Park. In between, armchair explorers will

find almost 1,000 pages of stunning photographs

and evocative thumbnail sketches of

the world’s greatest historical sites.

“It was

absolutely desperate,” says historian Richard

Cavendish of his daunting commission to

choose the attractions that would make the

cut.

“When I drew up the original contents list

and set off cheerfully on this job, I realized

that 1,001 places is a hell of a lot of places

when you’re trying to write them all down.

We tried to spread them all around the world

to the extent that we could and tried

to make them as varied as possible so they

weren’t all stately homes and churches.”



Many of the sites correspond to UNESCO’s

851 World Heritage Sites, and the book

earned a preface and high praise from Koïchiro

Matsuura, the organization’s director

general.

It’s a doorstop-sized volume, but

one Cavendish hopes will prove a valuable

resource to travelers around the globe.

“This

isn’t a book that anyone will sit down and

read from start to finish,” he says. “ I think it’s

a book that you dip into from time to time

when it’s nice to look at a few more entries.

The ideal outcome is that someone reads an

entry and thinks, ‘Gosh, that’s somewhere

that I would really like to see for myself. ’ ”


—Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2008



“Here’s a vacation challenge: Visit as many historical sites as you can. If you can’t get there by train, plane or boat, let your fingers do the walking through the 960 pages of this colorful, insightful book.”


—Carol Parker, The Tampa Tribune, March 23, 2008

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 960 pages
• Publisher: Barron's Educational Series (March 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764160443
• ISBN-13: 978-0764160448
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.4 x 2.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #226,840 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Major oversights hamper enjoyment, September 22, 2008

By	wolfgang731 - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

I love this series and normally give it a very wide berth and tend not to take it too seriously but rather regard it as a fun tool that provides a good starting off point. However, and with respect to the U.S. alone, the oversights are so glaring that I felt a need to add my two cents. When we're dealing with a country that in comparison with Europe and Asia that have two or three millennia's worth of history to draw back on, is so young that the TRULY historical places would seem obvious and somewhat limited, such exclusions are really inexcusable. Yes, most of the usual suspects are here, but check out those that were omitted. In no particular order:

Valley Forge
Independence Hall
Old North Church
St. Augustine Colonial Spanish Quarter & Castillo San Marco / Ft. Matanzas
Colonial Williamsburg
Ft. McHenry
French Quarter / Jackson Square & St. Louis Cathedral
Jefferson Memorial
The National Archives
Harvard University
House of the Seven Gables
Biltmore Estate
New York Stock Exchange
Salem Witch Museum
Ground Zero (Site of the World Trade Center)
Bunker Hill
Savannah Historic District
Falling Waters
Cathedral of St. John the Divine
Grant's Tomb

...to name a few. In their place, we get the following...

City Lights Bookstore
Disneyland
Universal Studios
Union Station - Los Angeles
Eastern State Penitentiary
Japanese Internment Camps
Kit Carson's Home
Virginia City
Golden Spike Historic Site
Grumman's Chinese Theatre
Forest Lawn Memorial Parks
Stonewall Inn

I'm not implying that the aforementioned, which were, in fact, included in the book, are not in their own right historic, because they are. But to leave out places such as Independence Hall, where both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were signed or Ft. McHenry, the place that inspired The Star Spangled Banner or Ground Zero, the site of the most monumental act of terrorism on U.S. soil or the historic center and fortifications of the oldest European settlement in what is the now the United States is just way too much to allow to go by without comment. Again, I take these publications with a grain of salt but when it's no longer a grain but rather a boulder, then heaving it over my shoulder isn't quite as easy.

Mind you, I'm focusing exclusively on the U.S. No doubt glaring omissions are not limited exclusively to said country.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, January 25, 2009

By	Bernard Zimmerman "operabuff" (Central New Jersey) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

I am still enjoying this great book. Plenty of photographs to show the special places, along with good commentary and descriptions. Worthwhile guide book for world traveler.