1000 Kudos

This is the first review I have ever written for Amazon, because I found a negative review to be so misguided and misleading I had to put in my two cents' worth. Elitist? Have those few displeased with the book even read it? If the Uffizi Galleries, the Masai Mara, the Montreal Jazz Festival, the Amalfi Coast Drive, Connemara and Belize's Barrier Reef are "elitist" then let me join those who subscribe to this rarified echelon of travelers. I join those led by Ms Schultz who find something of the world's beauty, romance and pleasure in these and 900+some other such designations that Ms Schultz spent 8 yr of her life putting together between two covers for the sheer pleasure of us "elitist" types. This is one of the est travel books ever written.

Good idea gone wrong

This book is poorly designed and poorly organized. Moreover, it assumes that you'd like to go to all of these places as a part of an all-inclusive tour package. I'm convinced that the majority of people who buy this book will never travel anywhere. Like other reviewers have said, this book is really elitist. The weird thing is that the author recommends some seriously out of the way places that the "all-inclusive" type of traveler would never want to visit in the first place. A good enough gift, but not much in the way of real, useful content.

Elitist

I had mixed feelings about this book. As someone who has been a traveler all his adult life and for whom travel is a passion, I am always interested in a book recommending places to travel, hoping to find a gem of a place of which I was previously unaware. I was prepared to have some disgreements with the author; after all, no two people on this planet could come up with a list of 10 places to visit, let alone 1,000, and expect to be completely in accord. Having said this, however, I was struck by some of her omissions, and even more so by some of her recommendations. But these are minor quibbles.

My major criticisms of the book can be boiled down to these two: 1) the book is relentlessly upscale; 2) it is excessively Eurocentric. Let me elaborate a bit.

Regarding my first point, and to cut to the chase, this is a book for rich travelers. In nearly every location she highlights, she invariably recommends the most expensive hotels. In quite a few cases, the hotel itself is a 'place to see,' i.e., it is one of her 1,000 places. Consequently, a person with an ordinary job receiving an ordinary salary might very well toss the book aside and conclude that such travels are something he/she couldn't afford. It also demonstrates a basic misunderstanding of the purpose of travel, which is to experience new things, to expose oneself to new cultures, to meet the ordinary people in other parts of the world who may look at the world in different ways than we do, and not to hole up in some luxury hotel, which you could very well do at home.

Regarding my second point, of the books 894 pages (not counting indexes), 342 are devoted to Europe, 53 to Africa, 19 to the Middle East, 95 to Asia, 47 to Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands, 215 to the US and Canada, 71 to Latin America, and 46 to the Caribbean, Bahamas, and Bermuda. Astonishingly, she devotes exactly 1/2 page to Antarctica, an entire continent, and tucks it in at the end of the Latin America section!

In spite of these biases, however, please note that I gave the book 3 stars, because there is a lot of useful information here, especially for someone new to travel, and she does mention quite a few places that might otherwise be overlooked and that are invaluable travel experiences. Examples: the Kingdom of Mustang in Nepal, Persepolis in Iran, Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, and the Ariau Jungle Tower in the Brazilian Amazon. And, as a pleasant alternative to the book's usual snob appeal, she includes Graceland in Memphis, the Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota, and Philadelphia cheesesteaks. But why not the Patpong area of Bangkok, the favelas of Rio de Janeiro (for which there is a safe tour), etc.

So I suppose this book is a worthwhile purchase--I'm not sorry I bought it--but take it with a grain of salt, look at a lot of other travel guides as well, and above all be aware that the unforgettable experiences of travel are not to be found among the snobs in luxury hotels.