Discover wonder.
"A wanderlust-whetting cabinet of curiosities on paper."-- New York
Times
Inspiring equal parts wonder and wanderlust, Atlas Obscura is a
phenomenon of a travel book that shot to the top of bestseller lists
when it was first published and changed the way we think about the
world, expanding our sense of how strange and marvelous it really is.
This second edition takes readers to even more curious and unusual
destinations, with more than 100 new places, dozens and dozens of new
photographs, and two very special features: twelve city guides, covering
Berlin, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Cairo, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City,
Moscow, New York City, Paris, Shanghai, and Tokyo. Plus a foldout map
with a dream itinerary for the ultimate around-the-world road trip. More
a cabinet of curiosities than traditional guidebook, Atlas Obscura
revels in the unexpected, the overlooked, the bizarre, and the
mysterious. Here are natural wonders, like the dazzling glowworm caves
in New Zealand, or a baobob tree in South Africa so large it has a pub
inside where 15 people can sit and drink comfortably. Architectural
marvels, including the M. C. Escher-like stepwells in India.
Mind-boggling events, like the Baby-Jumping Festival in Spain--and no,
it's not the babies doing the jumping, but masked men dressed as devils
who vault over rows of squirming infants.
Every page gets to the very core of why humans want to travel in the
first place: to be delighted and disoriented, uprooted from the familiar
and amazed by the new. With its compelling descriptions, hundreds of
photographs, surprising charts, maps for every region of the world, and
new city guides, it is a book you can open anywhere and be transported.
But proceed with caution: It's almost impossible not to turn to the next
entry, and the next, and the next.
