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It's not really a travel book, more like a love story (with Bermuda). The photos are beautiful, the content is fascinating. I bought this book after visiting Bermuda and realize how much I missed.
Just perfect. When I went to Bermuda for the first time recently, I wanted to leaarn more about this lovely island. Labrucherie's book provides exactly what I wanted - a readable and fairly comprehensive history of the island, as well as many beautiful pictures.
Bermuda is perhaps my favorite island--for its civility, its quiet beauty, a little touch of England in the middle of the Atlantic. The picture captions are concise, but packed with information; the author chooses and rations his words carefully.
A small quibble: there's no information about hotels, restaurants, etc. There's also, for those who want it, a complete text which conveys the history of the island.
Extraordinary photography, combined with intelligent, concise, even poetic text. perhaps because it focusses on the small things: the tiny flower known as Bermudiana, the young schoolgirl gazing deep into the camera.
However, this is not a guidebook, but rather a coffee-table "documentary" book, and in that department it is incomparable. I am English, but I have lived in Boston for many years.
This book captures Bermuda as I have seen no other book do.
I've given a number of copies to friends who love the island. this is a real in-depth portrait, not just "post-cardy" superficial coverage. Having travelled to Bermuda many times over the past twenty years (and I lived there for a time as well), I have to say this is the finest and most complete "coffee-table" book on the island that I have ever seen. The jacket blurb says the author was once a Peace Corps Volunteer, and it shows. I have several other books on Bermuda, but this one is in a class by itself. It is large-format, filled with superb color photographs (including a lot of aerial shots as well as some archival photographs of Bermuda in the mid-20th century). The text gives you a concise, intelligent overview of Bermuda's history.
There is a wide variety among the hundred fifty or so photographs, from close-ups of people to scenic panoramas, all in rich, lush colors. Particularly interesting are the stories of how Bermuda found itself squeezed between England and the Thirteen Colonies during the Revolutionary War and between North and South in the American Civil War.
This is literally a "Bermudaful" book. The author reveals that there were no cars on Bermuda until the 1940s and describes the more recent transformation of the island into a corporate center, "the Switzerland of the Atlantic." The care and craftsmanship that went into the creation of this work is obvious.
This elegant photography book provides a thoughtful and perceptive portrait of a genteel world all of its own. A bonus is the extensive historical background presented in an easy to absorb reader-friendly style.
And do not forget to catch the sweetheart on page 17. It makes one think that to escape modern life, the place to go is Bermuda.
The beach scenes and sunsets are breathtaking.
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