Really Big Books
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PDF.]
Title/Author/ Publisher/Price | WHERE GOLF IS GREAT: THE FINEST COURSES OF SCOTLAND AND IRELAND/ James W. Finegan/ Artisan/$60 | GOLF COURSES: FAIRWAYS OF THE WORLD/Photography by David Cannon/ Rizzoli/$195 | GOLF'S BEST NEW DESTINATIONS/Brian McCallen/ Abrams/$50 |
In a Nutshell | Photo-rich repackaging of his classic travelogues, Blasted Heaths and Blessed Greens and Emerald Fairways and Foam-Flecked Seas | Huge, stunning, evocative images of the game's landscapes | An illustrated Baedeker of resorts and upscale publics around the world that have opened since the mid-1990s |
Weight | 8.4 pounds | 9.2 pounds | 4.0 pounds |
Bona Fides | A veteran of more than 30 trips to Scotland and almost as many to Ireland, England and Wales | A good enough amateur to have tried qualifying for the British Open, he's the official shutterbug of the R&A | A former senior editor at Golf Magazine, he has written two other coffee-table guides to resort and public golf |
Sensibility | Insightful old uncle who has never met a blade of grass he wasn't thankful for | Artsy connoisseur of the signature hole | Cheerleading tour guide |
Format | Stop by stop--with lots of useful advice | All pictures, all the time | Inflated travel brochures cataloged by locale |
Recommended Spread | Forty-nine stunning pages on the Kingdom of Fife | One-by-five-foot pullout of the 11th on the Ailsa course at Turnberry with the sun serenading the lighthouse | The fusion Chino-Latino grub at Aramara (the restaurant at the Four Seasons Resort Punta Mita near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico) |
Most Likely to Inspire ... | Envy | Wanderlust | Oversaturation |
Missing Links | England and Wales | Shinnecock and the National | Kingsbarns and Doonbeg |
Major Shortcoming | Too bulky to pack in a suitcase | Too wide to fit through the front door | Too many B-list ports of call and second-rate layouts |
Nicest Touch | Fun lists including best restaurants, best par-3s and appealing villages | Signed and numbered 12-by-16-inch print of the Old Course at sunrise | The unexpecteds: Cyprus, Turkey, Brazil and the Czech Republic |
Last Words | A stylish, practical scrapbook of Celtic journeys | Lots of oohs and aahs, but not much substance beyond its wispy introductory text | Lots of good, but also the bad, the ugly and the ho-hum |