Customer Reviews

Angkor (Odyssey Guides)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I just returned from a week-long visit to Angor Wat and the surrounding temples and found this guide invaluable. It is concise and well-written, provides the historical background of the Khmer empire, and tells the visitor what to see and what he is seeing. I took the book with me everyday and feel that I would have missed a lot without it. It helped me to appreciate the spirit and beauty of the magnificent temples.

I wish that more books on ancient sites were as easy to understand and as helpful as this book. Anyone going to Angkor Wat should take this book with them.

If I had to choose one item to take to Cambodia it would be the 4th edition of Dawn Rooney's book on Angkor. The background on the geography, religion, architecture, and cosmology in the first half of the book provides a wealth of information that will enhance anyone's trip to Angkor. The second half, grouped into ten recommended tours, details each temple by giving an overview of the site, the historical setting, and the layout, which in most cases is accompanied by a plan. Descriptions of the carvings are clearly written and add to one's enjoyment of the site. My only complaint is that Dawn Rooney didn't tell us more as she obviously loves Angkor and is most certainly one of the world's experts on the subject. I've read the book three times--before, during, and after my visit and, thinking about the lively narrative, good photographs, and comprehensive content, I may just read it again. I give this book five stars plus! Don't go to Angkor without it!

Being a tourist who visiting Angkor for the first time, I want to find good guide book I could rely on. I'm more interested to know brief histories or stories associate with the sites (monuments) that I visit as well. I picked up this book at the souvenir shack in front of Baphoun which is one of the temple at Angkor Thom. It is a good book. I found Dawn Rooney did a fairly nice job of describing the Angkorean historical aspects in the Khmer religion, art & architecture style and present day restoration/preservation of Angkor. I'm not a bit surprised because the author is a PhD in art history. But the major disturbing flaw I found with this book is that the description of each monument left me blind as to where or what monument she's writing about. The book lack of enough monument pictures that she describing. For example, what does Phimeanakas or Prasat Soor Prat look like? Rooney should have included at least one picture of each monument she's referencing to or otherwise tourists who use this book will have a hard time trying to guess where they are and what monuments they are looking at. The book is good to those who want to know brief background of each monument but dont't care what that each monument looks like.

The book is fully packed of information. But then could the PhD Dawn Rooney sources be trusted ? Dawn Rooney maybe written from a Thai perspective. She irrelevantly made many references of Khmer's words as Thai words. For example, on page 125 she wrote: " 'wat' is the Thai name for temple, which was probably added to Angkor..." [so it became 'Angkor Wat']. Also on page 180, refering to "Preah Khan" monument, she cited that it is a translated word from "Nagarajayacri" of Thai means "The City of Sacred Sword". Therefore, she seems to imply the monument Pheah Khan (which is about 1.25 miles north of Angkor Thom) was a Thai monument. Dawn Rooney is wrong on both of these instances. 'Wat' is and was always a Khmer word for temple or pagoda. And 'Preah Khan' always means sacred sword. Cambodia is rich of her own culture, tradition and language. It is the Thai who uses a lot of Cambodian words and modified them as their own language. The origin of Thai language, according to the research of UCLA Language Material Projects, published that it "has borrowed heavily" from Cambodian(Khmer) words.

The book is a fairly good reading but since Dawn Rooney did not get some of her facts straight, I wouldn't rate it for more than two stars.

If you are interested to learn about the Khmer and her ancestors who built Angkor, I found the French translated books are excellent sources. Most French authors are archaeologists or expeditors to Angkor Wat themselves. I highly recommend Claude Jacqes "Angkor : Cities and Temples" in which Michael Freeman's photographs are stunning!!