Customer Reviews

Off the Map: The Most Amazing Sights on Earth as Seen by Satellite

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

 

 

This book was way more entertaining than I orpginally expected. The sights are really cool but the star of the book is the quirky, clever commentary. Not only do you get a description of what you are looking at, ther is usually a great "what if?" or "did you know?" story as well.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It makes great guest room reading material as there is a little something for everyone.

This book is a great compilation of photos and comments on them from the folks at Google Sightseeing, whose members pore over the maps on Google Earth and find some of the most unlikely and bizarre visual treats on the planet. Check it out and you'll be hooked!

My sister in law recommended this book and I love it. I love the photos and the captions. Quirky and fun. A great read in the bathroom.

This is an impulse purchase book, something within easy reach of the cash register. That said, it's quite good, though most (perhaps all) of the sites are mentioned in various Google Earth oddity web sites. Still, it's a good gift book or (small) coffee table book.

This is one of those books you see loitering near the cash register in book shops, which you pick up and on a casual flick through the pages buy it (wise folk, of course, note the title then order it cheaper online from Amazon).

I thought it was well worth the money. Now you can see a whole load of quirky shots of the planet that until recently really weren't possible and impressive quality, too. What I particularly liked was the concentration on the man-made world rather than the natural world. Here you can see a Stealth bomber on the runway at Edwards Air Force base, the Prophet Mosque, Medina, Saudi Arabia or hundreds of cars stored on a runway at RAF Bedford in England.

Mixed in with not normally seen photos there are plenty of offbeat sights that clearly would never be appreciated at ground level, like a huge rabbit on Mount Colleto Fava in Italy, designed by a bunch of artists from Vienna or a giant dead cowboy floating of the coast of Australia. I know that's a kind of vague location but all the images have precise co-ordinates on each page so you can find them yourself.

Although the book plugs Google Earth it might be worth checking out the same place on MSN Bing, where a bird's-eye view is sometimes available. In many cases both sites use the same image source. For instance both have the same scan of the world's tallest man-made structure the KVLY-TV mast at Blanchard, North Dakota shown on page 134. Factoid Time: the mast is 2063 feet high and the structure incorporates an electric elevator to allow (brave!) engineers to get to the top for periodic maintenance.

There is a spin-off to using the book because when you check out the sites on Google Earth you'll find that curiosity will get the better of you and something nearby will make you zoom in for a closer look and suddenly another hour has gone!

*** FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

Decent book of images found on Google Maps... Each image includes longitude and latitude so you can find them on Google... also has a link for a KML file that loads all the sites in the book plus some others into Google Earth... Worth the price...