Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher*

Celebrate the world. 229 countries & destinations to explore, 817 beautiful images to inspire - this international best seller features 100% all NEW images and text.

Bigger, brighter and bolder than ever, the second edition of Lonely Planet's definitive travel pictorial has been revised and updated to be even more inspiring than the last. The Travel Book captures the essence of every country on the planet through stunning photographs and atmospheric text. User-friendly A-to-Z coverage and double-page spreads of every country make this book a total delight - and an amazing gift. Includes cultural insights, key facts and maps. Also available in paperback, mini edition, and children's Not For Parents: The Travel Book - cool stuff to know about every country in the world!

"It just reminds me how much of the world there is still to see" - Tony Wheeler, Lonely Planet founder, 145 countries visited and counting ...

Authors: Written and researched by Lonely Planet

About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places where they travel.

TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice Awards 2012 and 2013 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category

'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times

'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves; it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia)

*#1 in the world market share - source: Nielsen Bookscan. Australia, UK and USA. March 2012-January 2013

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

A stunning and utterly captivating testament to the beauty and wonder of our natural and human world, this book covers a whopping 230 countries, including some not technically countries at all, like Greenland, Hong Kong, and various Caribbean islands. Casting a wide net, Lonely Planet's editors have nonetheless managed to distill something essential about each location, in 1200 dancing images of its people and places and brief but spot-on suggestions of what to eat, drink, listen to, and watch. Entries are arranged alphabetically rather than geographically, and this logic works: the oddness of seeing Jamaica followed by Japan and Jordan; or Afghanistan preceding Albania, Algeria, and Andorra is strange and startling and sure to delight. A dearth of historical facts or statistics-although capital, population, area, and official language information is included-make this not a reference work but rather, in the turning of the pages, a suggestive, provocative, loving portrait of our gorgeous, haunting planet, not lonely at all. Highly recommended.-Tania Barnes, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

Even the most avid readers of travel guides and travel literature will not have encountered a book quite like this one. It is huge and heavy but reasonably priced, and it is vastly informative, which is its calling card. All the writers who contribute to the Lonely Planet travel guide series have put heads, knowledge, and experience together and come up with an A-Z series of capsule profiles of every country in the world, 230 in number. Each country gets a two-page spread, on which are placed, like luscious dishes set before one at a feast, illustrations that are typical of Lonely Planet's unique, non-picture-postcard brand of shots. The accompanying text presents a cogent rundown of the best experiences for gaining the essence of the place; books to read beforehand; music to listen to before you go; food and drink to consume once you are there; and a few brief but pungent closing comments on the trademark things to do and buy and see and what, ultimately, is the best surprise awaiting the tourist. For borrowers in the travel section to sit down, look at, and make notes from, without taking off the premises. --Brad Hooper Copyright 2004 Booklist