Customer Reviews

Discovering South Beach Deco: Walking Tours in the Miami Beach Art Deco District

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I received this book in anticipation of a trip to the Keys, and the desire for a side trip to Miami Beach. Going into the trip, I was neither familiar with South Beach or with art deco, and after reading the book, I feel I very acquainted with both.
The book includes about 40 pages on the fascinating history of Miami Beach, as well as a phenomenal amount of architectural information on the buildings you will visit on any of the 8 walks that the Beaubiens have laid out for the reader.
The book includes maps and pictures for each of the walks, making it very easy to keep up with the narrative of each building as you walk along. In fact, the overview map of the 8 walks allowed me to pick and choose pieces of 5 of the 8 walks as I strolled around South Beach visiting particular buildings that interested me after reading the in depth descriptions found in the book.

This very readable walking guide offers a pleasurable and sometime surprising mosaic of architecture, history, personalities, and other curiosities of South Beach. The book is organized geographically (as one might expect a walking guide), each section with a map easily accessed via tabs in the righthand margin. In contrast to other guides, I would mark this one as the "thinking man's" guide to South Beach. I would highly recommend to anyone who lives in or is planning a visit to Miami Beach.

Discovering South Beach Deco: Walking Tours In The Miami Beach Art Deco Distract by Richard and Valerie Beaubien is a travel guide for South Florida tourists offering walking tours of over 300 historic buildings. Maps, black-and-white photographs, detailed directions, and inspired commentary make Discovering South Beach Deco ideal for any traveler (or resident!) interested in seeing the city's splendor for themselves. An index allows for quick and easy lookup of famous places and other subjects, and an introduction to architectural styles prevalent in South Florida helps orient the beginner to the expressions, styles, and history of landmark buildings. As easy-to-use for practical sightseeing as it is fun to page through at leisure.

Discovering South Beach Deco is a "must take along" book for anyone wanting to explore South Beach and the Art Deco District. Filling the text with architectural details and personal observations, the Beaubiens have created a simple, yet complete, guide to the architecture and people of South Beach. Unlike other guides, this one has a presonal voice, that of people enthralled by both architecture and the struggle to save fine examples of architecure for posterity. Even for a resident or frequent visitor, the Beaubiens present both new information or a new point of view through which to bring new understanding to the familiar. Discovering South Beach Deco works both for new explorers and veteran observers.

Mary Greenwood, Tour Guide and Author of How to Mediate Like a Pro: 42 Rules for Mediating Disputes and How to Negotiate Like a Pro: 41 Rules for Resolving Disputes

As a Tour guide and curious person, this book is a must for anyone who really wants to see the live history of South Beach. It goes street by street and has lots of interesting information about each building. It is fun to go block by block with book in hand and learn about the architects, the styles(there are more styles than just Art Deco.) the people (like Al Capone, Versace,), the movies and television programs (Miami Vice, Bird Cage, Hole In The Wall, Scarface.) There is something for all interests. I hope they are working on a sequel.

I received this book as a gift. After reading a few chapters, I felt like I was back in school reading a required text book. Although I do not live in South Beach, I go there frequently and find the atmosphere very colorful, lively and fun.This book showed none of that. In fact, I found it tedious and boring. At the very least, it should have had some colorful photographs showing some of the beautiful sights and capturing some of the excitement of Miami Beach. I am not clear why I was given this book as a gift except perhaps my friend received it also as a gift. The author does deserve a good deal of credit for all the information that was collected as does anyone who puts that much time and effort into any project.