Customer Reviews

National Geographic Traveler: Greece, 2d Ed.

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This is an excellent book for sites and all. I left it behind when I went to Greece and brought a bigger more detailed competitors book. But when I got back, I realized this would have been fine and superior in many ways.

National Geographic was THE window to the world in my youth, a more image-impoverished, dignified (and arrogant) time. But still, one expects great images and literate text from this source. And we get some of that. This book focuses on brief site descriptions coupled with a striking image. More significant sites (e.g. Delphi, Epidavros) add an image or two, a map or a drawing. There is a very brief section at the back on travel practicalities, hotels, food and a page or two for a Greek phrase book.

I'm torn. I am genetically incapable of criticizing National Geographic, other than for not being like I remember it. Yet this book falls between several stools. It doesn't have enough maps or hotel info to be taken on your trip to Greece, it doesn't have enough (or large enough) photos to send you into spiritual orbit, and it doesn't have enough historical data to be a companion on your armchair adventures (and you'd never sit and read this cover to cover). Yet - it certainly has some of all of those things. The photos are up to National Geographic standards. And what it has, it does pretty well.