Volume in Series Is Off the Track

OFF THE BEATEN TRACK: ITALY, revised edition, by Richard Sale, Phil Whitney and Nancy Woodyatt (Moorland Publishing/Globe Pequot Press, $14.95 paper).

Is it fair to judge a whole series of guidebooks by one volume out of nine? For that matter, is it fair to judge one volume by its treatment of one area?

First published between 1989 and 1992, the intriguing “Off the Beaten Track” books have just been reissued in revised editions. Besides Italy, they cover Austria, Britain, Germany, Greece, Portugal, Scandinavia, Spain and Switzerland.

The idea is to offer casually sketched itineraries through lesser-known, mostly rural portions of countries that are otherwise very well traveled--off the highways and onto the byways, as it were. It’s an excellent notion for a guidebook series, and the tone in which the books are written (by a variety of authors) is attractive. There are no mile-by-mile (or rather kilometer-by-kilometer) guided tours here, just advice on where to drive or hike and what to watch for as you do.

Unfortunately . . . . to spot-check the guides, I picked up the Italian volume and turned to the chapter on a region where I have lately been spending quite a bit of time myself--Liguria, the “Italian Riviera,” which curves along the coast between the French border and Tuscany.

Here, I was surprised by several things: that the famous English-founded Villa Hanbury botanical gardens near Ventimiglia was described as the German-sounding Villa Hamburg; that the Museo Bicknell in Bordighera was listed (with incorrect opening days) as a place to visit (its name notwithstanding, it is a library open to scholars by appointment and not a museum, as anyone who had been there would know); that, in writing about the mountain village of Triora, the authors make no mention of its ethnographic museum, with its displays devoted to the (literal) medieval witch hunts for which the place is famous; and that Taggia, which has no hotels this reviewer would want to stay in, is recommended as a base of operations for one itinerary--when Arma di Taggia, which has several nice hotels, is only two miles away and would make a much better base.

Most of all, though, I was surprised to find the Tuscan city of Carrara relocated 50 miles or so to the northwest on the coast near Genoa. (Talk about continental drift.) In other words, as appealing as these guides are, I’d use them--and especially the Italian volume--with care. Otherwise, you might end up more off the beaten track than you’d planned.

*

THAILAND, collected and edited by James O’Reilly and Larry Habegger (Travelers’ Tales, $15.95 paper).

Ironically, the two hottest genres in travel-book publishing today seem to be MTV/USA Today/short-attention-span little guides with lots of charts and pictures and not very many boring old words, and volumes like this one--books meant for reading rather than for sightseeing, offering literary or at least deftly journalistic sketches of a place. With “Thailand,” in fact, a whole new (if admittedly small) San Francisco-based publishing company, dedicated to precisely the latter kind of work, makes its debut. (Tales of Mexico, France, India and Hong Kong are next.)

This anthology includes pieces by such noted travel writers and journalists as Pico Iyer, Norman Lewis, Robert Sam Anson, Thurston Clarke, Simon Winchester and more, and the breadth and color of the collective portrait they provide of Thailand is remarkable. The little proverbs and asides peppered through the pages add still more flavor.

*

PRAGUEWALKS by Ivana Edwards and ROMEWALKS, revised edition, by Anya Shetterly (Owl Books/Henry Holt & Co., each $14.95 paper).

This widely imitated series keeps producing some of the best introductory guides to the world’s great cities. They are specialized guides in a sense. But they have general utility, explaining and describing each destination’s history, character and look from--as it were--the inside out. Ivana Edwards shows us her Prague (she was born in the city) with a friendly insider’s tone, though some segments seem needlessly dense with elucidated names and dates.

In her updated look at Rome (the first “Romewalks” was published 10 years ago), Anya Shetterly weaves at least three grand epochs of history, art and architecture together skillfully, leavening it with plenty of anecdotes and legends.

Both volumes are valuable, vastly informative guidebooks, even for the reader who will probably never actually tread the streets of these cities with them in hand.

*

CAMP THE U.S. FOR $5 OR LESS: Eastern and Midwestern States by Mary Helen and Shuform Smith (Globe Pequot, $13.95 paper). A sort of Guide Michelin for campers in 37 states east of the Continental Divide--abbreviated but covering the essentials.

*

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