Customer Reviews

Lonely Planet The Cities Book (General Pictorial)

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

 

 

For anyone with wanderlust in their blood, this is the coffee table book for you. Having thoroughly enjoyed the Lonely Planet's photo extravaganza predecessor, "The Travel Book: A Journey Through Every Country in the World", I was excited to see that editor Roz Hopkins has chosen to follow up with this subjective ranking of the two hundred cities deemed traveler favorites by Lonely Planet's readers and editors. Smaller, lighter and admittedly less definitive than "The Travel Book", "The Cities Book" is just as entertaining - slightly over five pounds of often glorious photographs and thumbnail sketches of the chosen cities.

The format is straightforward. Each city has a two-page spread with four defining photos and the following information consistently presented:

--Vital Statistics: Quick facts providing the date when the city was born, its elevation, its geographic size and location, its population and its nickname. It's amazing how Paris has set the standard for so many other cities, e.g., Budapest is known as the "Paris of Eastern Europe" and Beirut the "Paris of the Middle East".
--Anatomy: Description of the geographic layout of the city and how to navigate within.
--People: Ethnic breakdown of the denizens.
--Typical Native: Profile of what characterizes the city's typical native and what he/she thinks is important.
--Defining Experience: A sequential series of personal experiences unique to what the city offers, which can be done fairly easily by a traveler.
--Strengths: List of places, events and experiences that identify the best of what the city offers.
--Weaknesses: The flip side of what areas of development the city may have, e.g., Tokyo's high cost of living or St. Petersburg's collapsed buildings.
--Gold Star: One unique characteristic of the city that approaches the transcendent, e.g., carnival in Venice or the four Unesco World Heritage sights within Kathmandu.
--Cityspeak: Top conversation topics of natives.
--Starring Role in...: Selected books or films in which the city is prominently featured.
--Import: List of things (e.g., sports, foods, types of people, etc.) that have been historically absorbed in the city from other places.
--Export: List of personalities icons, famous items of interest or pervasive traditions that have their roots in the city.
--Sensory recommendations: See, Eat, Drink, Do, Watch, Buy, After Dark...sound bites about things to do to tantalize your senses in the city.
--Urban Myth: A colorful story, usually apocryphal in nature, about the city's history.

Obviously not as all-encompassing as "The Travel Book", which covers all the countries of the world, the list of top 200 cities will clearly elicit arguments as to which ones have been selected, where they rank and most critically, which ones did not make the cut. It hardly reflects the most scientific of methodologies as it is based on a poll taken for three months in early 2005 on the Lonely Planet Web site asking readers to vote for their favorite cities. Votes were also added for Lonely Planet's writers and employees.

From my perspective, the selections for the first one-third of the list are inarguable even though the rankings may surprise, e.g., Los Angeles seems low at #49, while Melbourne quite high at #11. The remainder of the list is a colorful hodgepodge with established cities mixed in with quite obscure choices in often remote locations. I think it would have made sense to include some parameters around what constitutes a city versus a town or a village, e.g., at #159, Christiansted in the US Virgin Islands has only 7,800 inhabitants, while Alexandria, Egypt, at #162, has 3.3 million people. Unsurprisingly, the US is the most represented country with 14 cities recognized and yet the omissions are glaring, e.g., Boston, San Diego, Santa Fe, Honolulu, among others. However, debating the choices is a major part of the fun, as well as the type of information that Lonely Planet offers for each city which has been culled mainly from their comprehensive guidebooks.

To give you a sampling, the top 25 cities are: (1) Paris; (2) New York; (3) Sydney (4) Barcelona; (5) London; (6) Rome; (7) San Francisco; (8) Bangkok; (9) Cape Town; (10) Istanbul; (11) Melbourne; (12) Hong Kong; (13) Kathmandu; (14) Prague; (15) Vancouver; (16) Buenos Aires; (17) Rio de Janeiro; (18) Berlin; (19) Jerusalem; (20) Montreal; (21) Edinburgh; (22) Venice; (23) Hanoi; (24) Amsterdam; (25) Singapore. Here's a list of the last five to illustrate their relative obscurity: (196) Saint-Denis, Reunion; (197) Granada, Spain (not obscure but the last of five Spanish cities listed); (198) Beira, Mozambique; (199) Madang, Papua New Guinea; (200) Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.

There is an interesting series of introductory essays on the past, present and future of urbanization. The photographic quality is generally superb, and you get a true flavor of the cities especially the inhabitants. I think for the more obscure locations, it would have helped to have a greater sense of the cityscapes. A great purchase for global trekkers and armchair travelers alike, this hefty book achieves its primary objective - to showcase the incredible diversity of the world through the urban oases in which most of us live.

Lonely Planet has done it again. I loved the Travel Book and now they have something similar... but its Cities. I starting flipping through this in a bookstore, was totally mesmerized and had to buy it. There are the usual suspects (Paris, London, New York) and then cities that I've never even heard of. Each page is dedicated to a specific city with beautiful photography and the usual Lonely Planet sass and humor. One of my favorite parts is the first few pages where there is a history of the city and an exploration of its future. Highly recommended!

I was looking for a book that had a few great pictures of each city and a bit of commentary. I'm more than willing to overlook the commentary -- how could any 1 page of bullet-point text ever really capture a city? But the commentary is weak -- a bizarre mix of pseudo-hipness and hackneyed stereotypes that may have been apt 20 years ago (if ever).

What I found unforgivable are the pictures. The only explanation I can come up with is they let loose an amateur photographer with instructions to be "artistic". Poor-quality pictures included of Paris: The canvas canopy of a pizzeria, pastries, the underside of the Eiffel tower, a couple kissing in a cafe. Of Rome: The face of a statue, a blurry shot of a street, a slice of a colonnade, 2 men with the city in the background. Lisbon: A tram in a narrow street next to hanging laundry, 3 undistinguished houses, a woman in a window and a crowded beach.

I've spent time in many of the cities covered and can't fathom why they chose the photographs included. They don't capture the cities and they are not good stand-alone photos.

I was looking forward to an interesting read with some evocative pictures. I don't recognize most of the cities as depicted in the book -- including New York where I live. I strained to identify all but 1 of the pictures (close shot of 2 women in the subway, a blurry shot of 2 cabs, a painting in a gallery at MOMA and the Apollo Theater sign). A little New York nit: how can one of New York's "strengths" be Dean & DeLuca and a "weakness" be "the coffee". One can find any style of really great coffee in NYC -- and Dean & DeLuca has some of it.

The book has the feel of an 8th grade social studies textbook. With the odd commentary and bad photos -- completely grim.

This book follows Lonely Planet's previous The Travel Book, and is generally similar in format. Unlike The Travel Book, this volume does not purport to be comprehensive. Rather, Lonely Planet has expressly made subjective judgments on which cities merited inclusion. US readers may be slightly surprised to see that cities like Boston, Denver, and San Diego were excluded while Memphis, Tennessee and Austin, Texas were included. Of course, like The Travel Book, the text descriptions of things representative elements of each place are inherently subjective. These comments should not be taken as criticisms. This is an appealing book for some armchair travel and could well motivate some actual travel.

Initially, I bought this book as a gift for my brother, but once I looked through it, I found it so hard to part with that I ended up buying one for myself too. Although it doesn't quite measure up to the sheer bliss that is Lonely Planet's The Travel Book, this sleek coffee table book is chock full of stunning photography and interesting trivia about 200 cities around the globe. Admittedly, the rankings are subjective (the order is based upon the results of an online survey), but the cities included in the book are very diverse, and one doesn't need to put much stock in the rankings to enjoy vicariously wandering through each city.

One thing I couldn't help but notice: since the book is geared toward tourism, it tends to whitewash the horrible conditions existing in some of the cities it describes, leading to rather silly-sounding descriptions such as "Strengths: lovely foliage; friendly people; excellent coffee...Weaknesses: rainy weather; expensive golfing; land mines; summary executions; boring food." Also, you can tell things are bad in a given city when it receives a Gold Star for "optimism."

With the holidays approaching, The Cities Book makes an excellent gift...and you may consider buying one for yourself.

I feel that this book is fairly good quality for what (I believe) was intended of it. I have the Travel Book and was excited to purchase this book also. It is a beautiful coffee table book and many guests flip through it even though they already have before.

While I can agree with everyone's comments about the cities that are included. I find it completely ridiculous that people are whining about what cities are included. Its done, that book is published. Yes some great cities are left out, I have been to many of them. But Lonely Planet put together a decent list of cities, I am not sure that anyone would ever agree with the rankings. But the Title is "The Cities Book", the subtitle even says the best cities in the world, NOT the highest ranked/favorite cities. Its just showing readers a informative/pictorial narrative of A FEW of the world's best cities. You can find amazing cities all over the world. My advice to you find some of them, either in this book or on your own, and go visit them.

This book does give an excellent quick glance at these great cities, and thus serves its purpose.... 4 stars!!

Flipping through this book, I couldn't help but to have a feeling that, aside from the top 10 cities, the Lonely Planet city ratings are pretty skewed.

The majority of submissions are probably done by backpackers who sneer at the "mainstream" cities and go out of their way to convince us the "obscure" ones are more "cool". In my opinion, Han Hoi (23) or Kathmandu (13) may be exotic to the unfamiliar eyes, but I fail to see how they are ranked much higher than Florence (24), Shanghai (48), or Delhi (60).

Some cities (no names mentioned) are simply, for the lack of more polite terms, wrecks, and yet they show up on the list in relatively high ranks. When evaluating the "goodness" of a city, stablity should be a pretty important criterion. But it is understandable how these young adventurous travellers who end up in these places would overlook this factor.

Not that I think they should exclude these "underdog" cities from making it to the list, but for the cities that already have a reputation, there are reasons that reputation is there in the first place. The evaluators should keep that in mind, and not let their passion cloud their judgment, whether be it for the sake of representation, political opinion, or simply to be different.

Another peeve of mine about this book, is that much better pictures could be used to represent certain cities. But I suppose sometimes Lonely Planet is at the mercy of the same travellers for footage. This begs the question, would the lack of "good" pictures indicative of the lack of willing travelers? If so, does it have something to say about the skewness of the Lonely Planet ranking system?

Inspires new travel ideas, allows you to reminisce about past travels.

A must buy. The photographs are fantastic. The topics are neat and so interesting. I especially like the surprises of each city. Great Coffee table book. I can visit each city vicariously.

Unexpected below par book from Lonely Planet. Fair to middling at best! I gave it one star overall. This book's purport to rank world cities is a fool's endeavor. The rankings are totally subjective and are based on opinion. I consider myself a well traveled individual, and unless one has personal knowledge of each city to be ranked, they can not provide a valid ranking of any one city as it compares to all the other ranked cities. Not a valid reference work, a non-scientific amalgamation of mere opinion; to be read by those with too much time on their hands. Thanks.