Rediscovering the World

With great writing from the best of Rough Guides’ stable of authors, Earthbound: A Rough Guide to the World in Pictures (ISBN: 978-1-84836-194-2) captures the essence of travel: why we do it, what we get out of it, and the sheer richness and pleasure of the world at large. Rough Guides’ photographers have traveled to every corner of the globe …. their mission to capture the spirit of a place, its people, its sights and monuments, its heart and soul. Mission accomplished!

With this 265-page large format book published in 2009, Rough Guide has cherry-picked its library of hundreds of thousands of accumulated images, recognizing that some were so outstanding that they deserved to be in a book of their own. Hence, the concept of Earthbound took shape. All pictures are about a specific location with longitude/latitude coordinates given so you may find it with Google Maps online and go there instantly.

Earthbound is a visioning book, not a nuts and bolts volume, designed to make you smile, exclaim and even laugh out loud, peppered with mini-stories by the photographers and writers who encourage viewing the world with different eyeglasses.

Here’s a “snapshot” from Lydia Evans, photographer for The Rough Guide to Paris: “I started the morning in Oscar Wilde’s bedroom, lying on the bed, trying to find an angle to shoot the gorgeous peacock wallpaper without too much reflection. Next, I popped by to see Mona Lisa. Tired of the endless tourists, she barely smiled. My brief was to turn the camera on the snappers! There were some puzzled expressions and a few huffs and puffs, but I stood my ground in a prime position up against the rope until I got my shot.”