Insight Guides

The beautiful colour photos glossy sheets make this guide seem attractive at first. But I was taken aback by some of its racist comments. Take, for example, these quotes on page 292: 'many thousands flooding into the hills and burrows to escape the terrifyingly relentless sword of Islam' and 'Astonishingly, Islam proved rather more open to religious freedom than Christianity'.

This book is also probably better used to plan a trip to Turkey than as a guide. While there is a lot of historical show more and cultural background at the start of the book, individual places are not always covered in much detail and some (e.g. the valleys of Cappadoccia) none at all. Pretty heavy to lug around with you too. show less

There's a lot of history in this book, which seems odd for a travel guide. It's a fine guide, although the need for this sort of thing has diminished with the rise of information on the internet.

Best for:
People who like more narrative and fewer details in their guidebooks.

In a nutshell:
Broken down by neighborhood, this guide provides narratives but not loads of details on places to see.

Worth quoting:
N/A

Why I chose it:
We are traveling to Glasgow later this month and sadly I could find no full-size proper travel books on the city - only pocket guides.

Review:
This is the first of two pocket-sized guides of Glasgow I’ll be reviewing. I started with this one because until I read the show more second, I thought this one was fine, so I guess the big take-away for me is to get at least a couple of different guides when traveling so we can compare and take the best away from them.

Like most travel books, this one is broken down by area, but it doesn’t give a great sense of where things are in relation to the city center. It’s also a long narrative with some items bolded, which isn’t how I can best process and grasp information. I did circle and start different attractions, but mentally I’m just not entirely sure where they all are and how they relate to each other.

However, I will be keeping this book, as I’m sure there’s good information in here, including a fairly robust ‘travel tips’ section that will likely come in handy.

Recommend to a Friend / Donate it / Toss it:
Keep until our trip is over, then donate it. show less

It is difficult to view Insight Guides generally as the ideal travelling companions; one needs to travel with something more detailed to visit an unusual place like Sardinia properly, (and Insight's rather poor indexing does not help). Even so, this guide, like others in the series, does provide a great deal of essential background information about the culture and unique sights of the island. If the result is something which could appear to be neither fish nor fowl, it has to be said that show more the wildness and sense of a place apart that pervades Sardinia is something difficult to convey in a guide. Nuraghi, perhaps, are the most obvious manifestation of this, (unless you have a recording or Sardinian music), but examples of the other enigmatic sights - domus de janas, tombe di giganti, well temples and the like - are frequently difficult to reach. This is also true of some of the Pisan Romanesque churches which are as much a part of the place but in such contrast to the prehistory. All of this is perfectly adequately described and illustrated by the Insight Guide. Perhaps if one reads this as background before or after a visit and uses something with more detail to actually find one's way around the sights of Sardinia, one has the best compromise. show less