Product Description

In 250 glorious photographs Wide Angle: National Geographic Greatest Places documents the beauty and depth of every part of the world. Delving deeply into a picture archive that houses over ten million images, with many photographs being published for the first time, this new book-the third and final in the "greatest photographs" series-presents the world's amazingly diverse places with epic grandeur, unparalleled intimacy, romantic beauty, and gritty realism. The photographs are landscapes, cityscapes, famous landmarks, and unfamiliar spots that reveal special qualities of geography or culture one might otherwise never see.

Spanning more than eleven decades, the images in Wide Angle are divided into twelve chapters, each depicting a unique geography—including East and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Polar Regions. Each chapter is introduced by award-winning cultural writer and critic Ferdinand Protzman, whose essays accent the stunning photographs by renowned National Geographic photographers. Both essays and photographs carefully examine a region's special qualities, creating unique character and its own special and unforgettable sense of place. In Wide Angle, National Geographic photographers have recorded the world's places close up, in sweeping breadth, in depth, and over time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22943 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-04
• Released on: 2005-10-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 504 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Spanning the world, from Northeast Europe to Southeast Asia, these 260 photos offer a spectacular view of regions of unimaginable, often haunting beauty. Many of the images, from the National Geographic Society's 10 million-image archive, have never been published before. Meditative introductions to each region of the world consider questions such as our stereotypical views of Asia and the ambiguity of evocations of the Middle East, their meaning "depending largely on what one believes." But the real attraction is the full-color photos: sometimes mysterious, like Karen Kasmaski's photos of sunflowers with Mount Fuji emerging from the shadows in the background; or playful, like Miguel Luis Fairbanks's woman driving in Australia with a young koala bear on her shoulder. Some are charming, like Steve McCurry's image of women in a field in Yemen, their hats bobbing above the lush clover; and still others present the natural world in an original light, like Anup and Manoj Sha's photo of a herd of zebras in Kenya, op-arty with its zigzags of black and white stripes. Not all the photos evoke pleasant images: the ravages of war in Croatia and the 2003 invasion of Iraq crop up, adding a dose of unhappy realities. Still, dipping anywhere into this volume offers a feast for the eyes and introduction to parts of the world most are unlikely ever to visit.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
This book is large: in format, in scope, in pages, and in its effect on the reader. Travel is all about place, of course, as this gorgeous album's subtitle indicates. The editors of National Geographic have culled from their archives a treasure trove of photographs, many never previously published, that evoke a certain moment in a certain small corner of the globe. The entire globe is the book's purview--all continents and every imaginable setting, from city to desert, and from a snowy national park to a birthday celebration in Mexico. A lovely book to savor forever. Robin Hoelle
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Ferdinand Protzman, an award-winning cultural writer and critic, is the author of Landscape: Photographs of Time and Place (National Geographic 2003). His reviews, essays, and articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune, ARTnews, the Harvard Review, Forward, and Zeit-Magazin. Protzman wrote the afterword in Arion Press's limited edition of The Voices of Marrakesh, by Nobel Prizewinner Elias Canetti (2001). He lives in Kensington, Maryland, with his family.

Customer Reviews

Journeys Through the World From Your Armchair
National Geographic Magazine has long been recognized for the quality of its color photographs by its brilliant staff of photographers who manage to go to places both known and unknown and open vistas of other cultures, other peoples, other landscapes. In this very large and exceptionally affordable volume are some of NG's finest images plus many dazzling photographs not previously published in the magazine. The result is a panorama of the world as few other books can supply.

Covering nearly all the countries of the world, WIDE ANGLE uses its descriptor to unfold some remarkable images of fields and terrain and the peoples who inhabit them, all composed beautifully with NGs typical 'hidden camera' technique. This is a travel volume for those who plan to visit the out of the ordinary places as well as a scrapbook for those who have been to the more accessible places, but is it more: this is a closer look at the planet we inhabit that is so magnificent it urges us by images alone to protect the beauty we threaten to destroy. Recommended. Grady Harp, January 06

Poor Execution
National Geographic Magazine is famous for their excellent photography; it is the very reason I picked up this volume. However, Wide Angle: National Geographic Greatest Places failed to live up to my expectations. I was underwhelmed not only by a large portion of the images, but mostly by the poorly executed concept. In a title that clearly implies these are the greatest places featured, I felt the chosen photographs illustrated some lackluster locales. Furthermore, the organization was too loose. The book could have benefited from better formating not only of its categories, but of the photos themselves, which are often stretched in an unflattering matter.

It's an amazing book, the best from the National Geographic
I have read basically all of the special editions from National Geographic, and this is without a doubt one of the best. The quality, variety and scope of the photographs, as well as the written articles accompanying them were just a piece of art. Enjoyable from the beginning to the end.