Reviewers' Corner

Here are a couple of the latest travel-book reviews written by ITN readers.

“National Geographic: The Ultimate Field Guide to Landscape Photography” by Robert Caputo (2007, National Geographic. ISBN 9781426200540 — 160 pp., $21.95).

Warning! This book is a slick-paper paperback with the Geographic’s usual fine photography, but the absolutely rigid binding and the narrow margins in the gutter requires a constant struggle to keep the print at the gutter visible. It is very hard to read.

Fortunately, for me, it was offered with a no-risk guarantee. I called at once and they sent a mailing label to use in returning it.

It is an astonishingly bad combination of page layout and binding. Thick books need flexible binding and space at the gutter.

— G.F. MUEDEN, New York, NY

“Insight City Guide: Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp,” edited by Carine Tracanelli (2006, APA Pub-lications/Langenscheidt Publishers. ISBN 9789712583994 — 256 pp., $16.95 paperback).

I was very pleased to receive this Insight City Guide because my travel bookshelf has 15 books of the same series.

For several days I carried this little book in my purse to read while waiting for buses, sitting in waiting rooms, eating, etc. The City Guides are much smaller and lighter than their “big country brothers” and, therefore, easy to take on a trip.

This is not the best guide for planning a trip because it falls short on lots of general information contained in other publications. (However, it does have a cute little restaurant map in a back pocket.)

It also has lots of beautiful color photographs, lots of historical facts, marvelous detailed information about places to see in each of the three cities, and splendid information about Flemish painters. Several maps are numbered to correspond with points of interest. The index is quite complete.

I found only two drawbacks. The print is small, because the book measures less than 8" by 5". Also, the maps are printed in light blue and gray so the numbers will show up.

I was in Belgium in June 2006 and wish this book had been with me. I travel on group tours, so the mundane things are taken care of for me. However, it would have been invaluable to be able to read about the places I would be taken to see.

“Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp” is very readable, and it’s a good book to take along. It is also a “keeper.”

— JACQUELINE HETMAN, El Cerrito, CA