This is one of those books where the real view can never look as brilliant as the coloured photograph on the page. Travel photography comes of age and is at its best. The combination of the eye of a professional photographer, the quality of the lens, the light at the right magic moment and the angled perspective turns every place into an alluring magnet for the traveller . This is a stunningly beautiful book because of the photographs and in every way achieves the high standards set by DK Eyewitness travel , but with such a weight it is not a travel guide and can only be used by the armchair traveller to savour and enjoy places already visited or perhaps to signal the next place to visit. It is a a weighty coffee table book to keep alongside your comfortable armchair and take time to dream of far away places when you are keeping snug . I visited Iran and. Persopolis a few years ago so it was a special delight to see the Apadana Staircase as the backdrop photograph to Bill Byson's forward. Forty-four travel writers have contributed their short inserts but it is only in reading the "About our Authors " sections that you can see who wrote what. The object of this book is to introduce 1000 "amazing places off the tourist trail" . The method is to give top billing to an alternative gem , a worth visiting place versus the better known and hence more visited place . The advice , for example, is to see Avebury vs Stonehenge with short recommendations on six other ancient stone megalith sites around the globe . Boxed snippets follow the formula "Forget the known place?" and explore the new recommendation is a negative sales pitch. I agree on the promotion of Herculaneum vs Pompeii ... We found Pompeii tarrific but Hercullaneum even better and my advice would be enough time to visit both and enrich yourself with the contrast between the two Roman buried sites. I loved the recommendations on the smaller Parisian museums though none would replace the Louvre. For my own country, the San rock art of the Drakensberg is pitched against the cave paintings of France's Lascaux . But if you happen to be a tourist and traveller in SAfrica this special temptation to get to the Drakensberg has to feature in a well researched itinerary . My next travel destination is Turkey and while I shall absorb all of the recommendations in this book, it cannot be your sole guide. The theme "the roads less travelled" is a novel selling point but will the book itself result in a switch in destination emphasis. I doubt it. Overall a delightful book and earns. 4 stars in my ranking. Maybe 4.5 . ( )