Knopf Guide: Istanbul

Knopf Guide: Istanbul

Completely revised and updated An accelerating trend in guidebooks is the integration of graphics with text. Two new series, the "Eyewitness Travel Guides" marketed by Houghton Mifflin, and the "Knopf Guides" (reviewed here), which originate with the French publisher Gallimard, achieve new levels of visual delight. In the Knopf series each page is a rich palette of several illustrations, most colored, scattered throughout the text. There are sketch maps, portraits of famous people, cutaway views of buildings, street scenes, and works of art, plus depictions of the money used, buses, telephone booths, wildlife (yes, even cities have wildlife), and virtually everything else that can be explained visually. The Istanbul volume, for example, has sketches displaying Turkish body language and sequence shots of a bellydancer. The text is necessarily choppy but intelligent and informative, with practical information highly abbreviated and confined to the end. Indexing is excellent, and the bibliographies are thoughtfully chosen. All this is packaged in flexible covers and in a convenient carrying size. Attractive yet practical, these books will fly off library shelves. Other titles currently available cover: San Francisco, Venice, Amsterdam, and Florence, with more to follow. - Harold M. Otness, Southern Oregon State Coll. Lib., Ashland Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. Completely revised and updated Used Book in Good Condition