Customer Reviews

France (Enchantment of the World, Second)

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

 

 

I thoroughly enjoyed this well written volume about French history and culture. Not only is the text first rate, it is filled with stunning color photos of various places in France and makes the reader really want to go there. The whole thing is good, but I thought the chapter on the French arts was particularly educational. I think the book is aimed at young people, but adults will definitly find it worthwhile too.

This is a colorful, absorbing look at one of the world's most interesting and picturesque countries. The author is Don Nardo, who is known for his many fine books about ancient history, so this book goes a bit more heavily into France's history than into other aspects of the country. Still, it's a pretty much balanced presentation. The chapter on the history of French culture is especially well done and interesting. I would recommend the book highly to anyone planning a trip to France.

After my highly negative review of Don Nardo's "A Travel Guide To... - Ancient Alexandria," I checked out reviews of his other books on Amazon and saw that overall, he got consistently high ratings. I decided that perhaps the "Travel Guide" was a fluke, and that his other books would be better, so I checked out "France: Enchantment of the World" from my local library.

I was pleasantly surprised - this was a fascinating book! I think the "Travel Guide" book fell flat because of the gimmick of writing it as a travel guide instead of a normal book (for me, it just did *not* work) and the very boring black and white photos that accompanied the text. They did absolutely nothing to enliven the book.

"France," on the other hand, had beautiful color photos on almost every page and was professionally done - you can tell that Scholastic spent a lot of money to put together a high-quality book. The book is broken up into sections (Nature, Economy, Politics, Art, etc) and as a whole, works really well. I learned a lot, and feel as if the book gave a nice overview of a broad subject without A) Being too vague or B) Going into too much "boring" detail, considering the age group that this book is aimed at. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and am looking forward to both reading more books in the Enchantment series, and reading more Don Nardo books.