Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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66 of 70 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An outstanding magazine, June 10, 2003
Who doesn't know National Geographic? Despite the term 'national' in the title, this is a publication that has an international reputation, and has set its sights on exploring every inch of the globe, and beyond. School children everywhere use National Geographic as a resource. It is a periodical, however, that goes far beyond the school library. Interesting, erudite, broad-ranging and fascinating (in addition to being, dare I say it, educational), National Geographic has something for everyone.Articles involve history, culture, sociology, biology, architecture, archaeology, and physical science in addition to the trademark item, geography. Recent issues have included articles on archaeology of the Indus Valley, earthquakes in Turkey, Samoan culture, jellyfish, and dinosaurs. National Geographic has a knack for combining the timely with the timeless to make each issue interesting from a current events perspective (recent articles on the Golan Heights and touring London show this) as well as being worthy of retaining for future reference by combining history and other details. Coupled with the articles, National Geographic has fantastic photography. In the June issue, there is a 'family photo' that was taken at the annual photographic seminar in Washington, D.C., in which more than half of the regular contributors to the magazine were present and photographed around the great seal of National Geographic. According the caption: 'The 47 men and women shown have collectively logged some 700 years taking pictures for this magazine alone. They've photographed roughly 715 articles, and at a current average of 29,000 frames shot per story, that works out to about 20.7 million images.' Authors and photographers for National Geographic are perhaps one of the most diverse lots of people working for any periodical. From urban to rural, civilised to exotic to remote and desolate locations; from peaceful and happy events to battlefield and disaster situations; from home life to professional life to religious life and beyond, these women and men have covered almost every aspect of the world (and beyond!). Photographic and journalistic excellence is a hallmark of this magazine, and it shows in every issue. But the maps! What about the maps? Oh, yes, this is perhaps the distinguishing feature of National Geographic, something that is also well-known from school days. Teachers always loved to put National Geographic maps up on the walls, and issues continue to include the most up-to-date maps of countries, physical features, even the moon, planets, and star systems. The National Geographic Society was founded in 1888 as a nonprofit scientific and educational organization, and has in that time supported more than 6500 explorations and research projects. They have also included in more recent times to support students with scholarships. For instance, since 1993 they have given a scholarship each year to a British student in conjunction with the British Cartographic Society, in recognition of the outstanding mapmaking student in the UK. This will help continue the tradition on National Geographic.
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70 of 80 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Cheaper price for this magazine, April 4, 2007
$15 for a year's subscription at the national geographic mag site. Go there and buy it. One star for Amazon trying to get you to shell out the extra dough.
-Karl
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Rising price, declining content, July 13, 2008
It can't be argued that National Geographic still features excellent photography of a wide variety of subjects, but the written content of this famous publication has declined to the point of self-parody. NG still commissions a few notable journalists (Alma Guillermoprieto's contributions are invariably excellent), but contributions by the likes of Frank Viviano, William Allard, etc. are characterized by a thoroughly unprofessional (and distinctly American) tendency to express their personal opinions and experiences in their articles, which are typically distinguished by the most nauseatingly saccharine, humanist perspectives. If you're looking for journalistic objectivity, you'll only find it sporadically here, and mostly in articles pertaining to the fundamental sciences or their relation to technology.
Some of the topics that NG explored in 2006 were incredibly mundane. These included extensive cover stories concerning a scientific examination of the nature of love and (I swear to god this is true) the worldwide appeal of soccer. In the latter issue, one of the maps that we readers usually expect was substituted by a fold-out poster featuring photos and drawings of soccer players and fields, and percentage rates indicating the game's popularity in different continents. If you think that I'm lying, check out the June 2006 issue and witness this inanity for yourself. Again: these were cover stories, not articles buried somewhere in their respective issues. The relative lack of variety in the magazine's subject matter is also discouraging. I don't mind NG's preoccupation with environmental topics; while it's colored with a variety of pessimistic fatalism that's obviously tailored to appeal to moderate leftists with an interest in these subjects, these issues are quite important and worthy of discussion in this magazine. But in the course of one year, I was treated to no fewer than three articles on the topic of evolution, none of which conveyed anything that I (a layman on the topic) didn't know or any conclusions whatsoever: puff pieces, essentially. And of course, the season kicked off with an article on the Grand Canyon. Beautifully shot and hastily written, and I know what the Grand Canyon looks like. I know all about it. In my relatively short (shy of three decades) life, I've read no fewer than six National Geographic articles on the Grand Canyon. Thanks so much for yet another, but I already know about the Grand Canyon; this article didn't tell or show me anything that I didn't know about it, for god's sake. The ZipUSA feature is aimless and uninteresting, mostly an exhibit for how commonplace most of the USA is. I don't know if anybody else has noticed this, but it seems as though the correspondence featured in the magazine's letters section is often cherry-picked for the most vapid and (appropriately) leftist commentary of its reader base.
The thing is, I still can't dismiss NG. For every lousy article in an issue, there's one that fascinates: a photographed review of present-day Chernobyl, Prince Charles' conservationist efforts in Cornwall, unearthed Peruvian mummies, and so on. But nothing here is worth the absurd cost of an annual subscription, especially considering that there's a lot of advertising in every issue. If NG wants advice, here it is: trim the fat. Dump some of your ads and all of your trite articles (about half of the content in any given issue). Either halve the length of your issues or move to a bimonthly format, restore the detailed maps that your customers want, and for god's sake, lower the price. My grandmother had a traditional devotion to this now-bloated magazine, but its higher standard of quality justified her custom back then. There's no reason why I can't just drive or walk to my local library and check out the latest issue at no cost.
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