Customer Reviews

Jerusalem and the Holy Land (Eyewitness Travel Guides)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's tough to pick the "best" guidebook for a particular destination, and the proliferation of free travel information on the web makes choosing "the one" even tougher. My wife and I always start with a copy of an EyeWitness guide for the destination: there are pictures on every page, and we find the images help us plan our trip: the guides are particularly good for architecture and art. The practical guides in the back cover currency, hotels and restaurants.

This guide to Jerusalem is a particularly good example of the DK offerings: the images, paper, text, all are up to the high standards of other books in the series.

Having written that, there is really only one page that matters in deciding whether to buy: the newer the guide the better. This book appeared first in 2000 and was my companion to Israel. It was substantially revised in 2002, and revised again in 2007. If you like the Eyewitness series and have any interest in the destination, armchair or on the ground, your decision is made.

Note: DK maintains an excellent website at TravelDK , with updates on many of its guidebooks.

Robert C. Ross 2008

As someone who has lived in Israel for almost a year, I know that every tiny thing is politicized here. So I don't really hold it against this guide that it has an obvious anti-Zionist slant. It's hesitant to mention the word Israel (note the title), but sometimes it does. It does not acknowledge that Jerusalem is in Israel, but you'd only notice that if you're paying attention. Any section that discusses the modern history of Israel is severely biased. The tone is appropriate, but the facts are presented in such a one-sided manner that relying just on this book would give you a seriously skewed perspective. There aren't many up-to-date guides to Israel, and this one is pretty good (I also like the Frommer's). So go ahead and buy this guide, but read about Israel from a couple of other sources to offset the bias. The Idiot's Guide to Middle East Conflict is an easy to digest overview, though it's biased in the other direction -- sadly, I don't think objectivity on this subject is achievable.

Purely as a tour guide, this doesn't quite stand alone; it's a great supplement if you have another guide. Hotel and restaurant listings are very brief, and they aren't included on the maps.

My wife and I spent a week in Israel in March 2009. The 2007 edition of "Jerusalem & The Holy Land" was extremely helpful in preparing for our seven-day tour. This guidebook is packed full of information. I was able to plan ahead on what to look for at a given site. For example, from this guide I learned that the Church of the Nativity had faded paintings on columns done by the Crusaders. I was able to actually see them. This book is very practical. The photos of Israeli currency are very helpful as most of my purchases were made in Shekels (Incidently, a 2-shekel coin has been introduced since guide's publication).

The Hebrew phrases in the book are helpful. My only suggesting would be to add a few basic Arabic phrases as one will encounter many Arab shopkeepers.

I hope to return to Israel in a few years an will again purchase a DK Eyewitness Travel book.

I had researched Israel travel guides for quite some time before selecting this book. I wished I had gone with the Fodor's like I had originally planned. There are 2 reasons for returning it...

First, the font size is incredibly small! It can't be more than an 8 pt font. I'd read the review commenting on this fact but didn't think it would be that bad. It would be impossible to travel with this guide AND the magnifying glass that would be needed. Before purchasing, I used the 'Click to look Inside!' feature to check it out. Looked fine to me (and no, I did NOT zoom in on the text). I compared the book with the page on my monitor and they were nowhere near the same size. I feel this is very misleading.

Second, the book is absolutely anti-Semitic/Christian and even anti-Islam! I do believe that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but come on...this is a travel guide!! Not the opinion page of the New York Times. Here's a perfect example from page 21:

"The Old Testament as we know it was compiled from a variety of sources, no earlier than the 6th century B.C. These narratives might well contain kernels of historical reality, but by the time they came to be set down they were essentially no more than folk tales."

Folk tales?? Why would anyone spend several thousand dollars to travel to Israel to visit the various sites of 'Folk Tales'? And why would we need to buy a $16 travel guide to do it? I'm going to Israel to visit documented historical and archeological sites... and I'll be using Fodor's Israel!

BTW - the newest edition of Fodor's Israel (8th edition) will be available on 8/9/11.

"Jerusalem" and the Holy Land" was a great help to me while on my recent Sabbatical. It was small enough to carry and yet informative enough to be worth carrying. However, since I was visiting 5 countries, I made a habit of leaving each guide book to lighten my load as I was picking up other items along the way. I bought this one to replace the original and couldn't have been happier to receive it on time and in great condition. It helped me remember places and stories and, more importantly, label my photos.

I am getting ready for my upcoming Mediterranean cruise and looking for the best travel guide on Israel I could find. I have never realized that it would be such a difficult task. My number one choice for the travel giudes for the last 20 plus years has been Rick Steves. I have never been dissapointed in his suggestions (with very few exceptions). Unfortunately, Rick Steves has no guide on Israel at this point in time. After reading a ton of reviews on several choices, I was still not sure which one to pick - there is no obvious 'this is it' winner. I have several DK guides and my overall impression has not changed over the years. Even though they are very pretty (printed on the best paper and very high quality pictures) and infromative, they are not very useful in both planning the trips and using on site. They are useless in planning the trips because they do not offer opinions and ranking of the sites and, therefore, it's impossible to pick the 'do not miss' sites along with 'nice to see if I have extra time' places. The DK guides also do not have useful public transportation of a museum hours of operation information. I used a DK guide for planning one of my trips to Italy and was sorely dissapointed in my choice of sites. After spending considerable time searching for some of these sites, I realized that these sites were not really worth all that effort and I could have made better use of my time. The DK guides are useless on site for a very simple reason - they weigh a TON - I've tried using one in Paris and gave it up in favor of another guide. My search for a guidebook on Israel continues but I am leaning but I am leaning towards the Fodor's guide.

This book was initially purchased in 2000 and I wanted an updated version as so much has changed in 8 yrs.
I was disappointed as I found pretty much the same pictures and content.
That being said I LOVE the DK books for travel ...they are terrific guide books.

This is an excellent guide. The Eyewitness guide breaks it down by regions making it easy to navigate the book

A great travel guide full of beautiful pictures. The most informative I have found for the Holy Land. Includes great details about Petra.

Have used Eyewitness guide books before and always happy with them. It has concise information that is easy to follow. Not in great depth, but that wasn't what I was looking for. This is the book I prefer. I, too, was a little put off with their reluctance to refer to Israel. They usually just default to "the Holy Land".