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1001 Historic Sites You Must See Before You Die
by (Editor: Richard Cavendish) (Preface: Koichiro Matsuura)
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Barron's Educational Series (2008-03-01)
ISBN: 0764160443
EAN: 9780764160448
Dewey Decimal #: 910.2
Binding/Media: Hardcover - 960 pages
SKU: 09122009-1310
Condition: Fine
Comments: 0764160443 Brand New, but may have minor wear/tear on dust jacket. New, never read, may have minor wear on cover.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Both casual travelers and dedicated history buffs will relish this visitor's guide to palaces, cathedrals, temples, battlefields, homes of great artists and statesmen--places and monuments that bear witness to thousands of years of human history. Packed with vivid color photos and detailed textual entries 1001 Historic Sites carries its readers off to places that include:
Prehistoric Sites: Stonehenge, England; the Lescaux Cave Paintings, France, and others Battlefields: Waterloo, Belgium; Gettysburg, U.S.A.; Hastings, England; Ypres, Belgium, and others Buildings and Monuments: St. Basil's Cathedral, Moscow; Nishi Hogan-Ji (Buddhist temple), Kyoto, Japan; St. Paul's Cathedral, London; the Eiffel Tower, Paris; the Empire State Building, New York City; the Ponte Vecchio, Florence, Italy; the Wailing Wall, Jerusalem; the Pyramids, Egypt; and many others Homes of the Famous and Infamous: Mozart's Birthplace, Salzburg, Austria; Shakespeare's birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, England; Jane Austen's home, Chawton, England; Hitler's retreat at Berchtesgaden, near Munich, Germany; and many others
1001 Historic Sites makes a great book for browsing, an idea-packed source for vacation planning, a handy reference volume for students of history, and a sheer pleasure for the general reader.
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Customer Reviews
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Great Book
Rating  (5)
Date: 2009-01-25
4 out of 6 customers found this reveiw helpful
I am still enjoying this great book. Plenty of photographs to show the special places, along with good commentary and descriptions. Worthwhile guide book for world traveler.
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Major oversights hamper enjoyment
Rating  (3)
Date: 2008-09-22
10 out of 14 customers found this reveiw helpful
I love this series and normally give it a very wide berth and tend not to take it too seriously but rather regard it as a fun tool that provides a good starting off point. However, and with respect to the U.S. alone, the oversights are so glaring that I felt a need to add my two cents. When we're dealing with a country that in comparison with Europe and Asia that have two or three millennia's worth of history to draw back on, is so young that the TRULY historical places would seem obvious and somewhat limited, such exclusions are really inexcusable. Yes, most of the usual suspects are here, but check out those that were omitted. In no particular order:
Valley Forge
Independence Hall
Old North Church
St. Augustine Colonial Spanish Quarter & Castillo San Marco / Ft. Matanzas
Colonial Williamsburg
Ft. McHenry
French Quarter / Jackson Square & St. Louis Cathedral
Jefferson Memorial
The National Archives
Harvard University
House of the Seven Gables
Biltmore Estate
New York Stock Exchange
Salem Witch Museum
Ground Zero (Site of the World Trade Center)
Bunker Hill
Savannah Historic District
Falling Waters
Cathedral of St. John the Divine
Grant's Tomb
...to name a few. In their place, we get the following...
City Lights Bookstore
Disneyland
Universal Studios
Union Station - Los Angeles
Eastern State Penitentiary
Japanese Internment Camps
Kit Carson's Home
Virginia City
Golden Spike Historic Site
Grumman's Chinese Theatre
Forest Lawn Memorial Parks
Stonewall Inn
I'm not implying that the aforementioned, which were, in fact, included in the book, are not in their own right historic, because they are. But to leave out places such as Independence Hall, where both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were signed or Ft. McHenry, the place that inspired The Star Spangled Banner or Ground Zero, the site of the most monumental act of terrorism on U.S. soil or the historic center and fortifications of the oldest European settlement in what is the now the United States is just way too much to allow to go by without comment. Again, I take these publications with a grain of salt but when it's no longer a grain but rather a boulder, then heaving it over my shoulder isn't quite as easy.
Mind you, I'm focusing exclusively on the U.S. No doubt glaring omissions are not limited exclusively to said country.
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