Reviews
"I thought I had seen most of the interesting bits of the world. Atlas Obscura showed me that I was wrong. It's the kind of book that makes you want to pack in your workaday life, and head out into the places you'd never have dreamed of going to see things you could not even have imagined. A joy to read and to reread." --- NEIL GAIMAN, author of Sandman and American Gods "Atlas Obscura is a joyful antidote to the creeping suspicion that travel these days is little more than a homogenized corporate shopping opportunity. Atlas Obscura presents hundreds of surprising, perplexing, mind-blowing, inspiring reasons to travel a day longer and farther off the path. . . . here are self-mummifying monks and shrines to slain insects. The Mound of Ears. The Jihad Museum. Bioluminescent squid and the world's largest drain . . . Bestest travel guide ever. " -- MARY ROACH, author of Stiff and Gulp "Atlas Obscura may be the only thing that can still inspire me to leave my apartment . As someone nearly pathologically afraid of the great unknown, this resource is essential for exploring the world and engaging adventure with wit and style (often from the comfort of my bed)." --LENA DUNHAM, creator of Girls and author of Not That Kind of Girl " What a strange and wonderful book! It is as curious and surprising as Saddam Hussein's very own Blood Qur'an--written in his own blood--that I would never have known about had I not read the amazing Atlas Obscura." --JON RONSON, author of So You've Been Publically Shamed "This book is as curious and enthralling as the world it covers . Each page reveals some hidden realm--a realm that is frightening, or funny, or magical, or simply mad, but that always leaves the reader in wonder." --DAVID GRANN, author of The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon " My favorite travel guide! Never start a trip without knowing where a haunted hotel or mouth of hell are!" --GUILLERMO DEL TORO, filmmaker, Pan's Labyrinth "Your peregrine falcon needs a small talon trim? Go straight to the Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital . . . Be grateful when visiting the Karni Mata Rat Temple if one of the 20,000 venerated rodents runs across your bare foot--it is considered good luck . . . You won't be able to enter the 20-years-in-the-making and still abandoned tallest hotel in the world. It does not matter. Wherever you look around Pyongyang, North Korea, the 105-story skyscraper silently towers over all . . . Life is short. Our planet is filled with curiosities and marvels . . . and this wondrous book is your guide! " --PHILIPPE PETIT, high wire artist and explorer
Synopsis
It's time to get off the beaten path. Inspiring equal parts wonder and wanderlust, Atlas Obscura celebrates over 700 of the strangest and most curious places in the world. Talk about a bucket list: here are natural wonders--the dazzling glowworm caves in New Zealand, or a baobob tree in South Africa that's so large it has a pub inside where 15 people can drink comfortably. Architectural marvels, including the M.C. Escher-like stepwells in India. Mind-boggling events, like the Baby Jumping Festival in Spain, where men dressed as devils literally vault over rows of squirming infants. Not to mention the Great Stalacpipe Organ in Virginia, Turkmenistan's 40-year hole of fire called the Gates of Hell, a graveyard for decommissioned ships on the coast of Bangladesh, eccentric bone museums in Italy, or a weather-forecasting invention that was powered by leeches, still on display in Devon, England. Created by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras and Ella Morton, ATLAS OBSCURA revels in the weird, the unexpected, the overlooked, the hidden and the mysterious. Every page expands our sense of how strange and marvelous the world really is. And with its compelling descriptions, hundreds of photographs, surprising charts, maps for every region of the world, it is a book to enter anywhere, and will be as appealing to the armchair traveler as the die-hard adventurer. Anyone can be a tourist. ATLAS OBSCURA is for the explorer., The bestselling book that celebrates wonder all around the world and in our backyards, now in an updated second edition with more than 120 brand-new destinations to explore, new city guides, and a full-color gatefold map., From the founders of Atlas Obscura.com, the online destination for wonder and curiosity -- with over five million active monthly users -- comes a book like no other, featuring over 600 lushly illustrated entries on wondrous, curious, eccentric and bizarre locales: from the bone museums of Italy to the self-mummified monks of Japan to the Gates of Hell, a 328-foot-wide-hole in the middle of the Turkmenistan desert that has been on fire for 40 years. Engagingly written, scrupiously researched, beautifully designed and endessly fascinating, Atlas Obscura is the pinnacle of armchair travel.
