Wide Angle

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 

Each of the 260 brilliant photographs in this marvelous collection is unique.Some are alive with bright colors and sparkling highlights,others evoke softer,quieter moods in muted hues and subtle gradations.Where one summons a vast,still landscape that fades into distant silence,the next vibrates with the energy of a charging bull or an exuberant child at play.But whether they show us crowded city streets or empty wilderness,all of these arresting pictures share one compelling quaility:a sure sense of place that ulls us into the frame and turns and image into an experience.
Every great place hae its own special spirit,and every photographer represented here exhibits a rare gift for capturing it.Encompassing all seven continents and more than a century of superb photography,their work does more than see ,it perceives-and invites us to share the wonderful magic of discovery.

WOLFGANG VON BRAUCHITSCH,Ferdinand Protzman is an award-winning cultual writer,critic,and contributing editor to ARTnews magazine,His reviews,essays,and articles have appeared in the Washington Poat,the New York Yimes,the Wall Street Journal,the Internati