Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 914 EAN: 9780192100016 ISBN: 0192100017 Label: Oxford University Press, USA Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 240 Publication Date: 1998-07-23 Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
Budapest, dramatically situated on the Danube, is a city that makes an immediate impression on a visitor. It exhibits all the scale, grandeur and excitement of a major capital, yet it is a city absorbed by nostalgia, and openly scarred by its history. A travelers enjoyment of the city will no doubt benefit from a fuller understanding of Budapests rich and idiosyncratic culture. Budapest: A Cultural Guide is a personal and informative introduction to Budapest, mingling history with anecdote, exploring past and present. Travel writer Michael Jacobs begins his cultural guide with lively essays, interwoven with some of the author's own experiences, dealing with key aspects of the city's life, history, and culture. Jacobs also includes a series of six walks arranged by district, enabling visitors to experience the city's evolution for themselves, and featuring all the major sites and a personal selection of less well-known, often neglected ones. Rich photos provide an introduction to Budapests beauty for the armchair traveler, and detailed maps plot out the nuances that make this Eastern European city one of the most popular tourist sites of the 1990s.
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating: Summary: No pictures, but informative text and intelligent p-o-v Comment: Contrary to the Ingram blurb, my copy lacks "30 rich photographs." But Jacobs balances Andras Torok's idiosyncratic native's "Budapest, a critical guide" with his Brit, ex-pat perspective, which adds artistic and critical context and helpful overviews of popular and obscure sights. In the first five chapters offer a succint history of the city. I found especially valuable "the Moving World," on the various accounts available to English-speakers from those who had endured the 20c in this city. Also consult George Cushing's Hungarian section from James Naughton's Traveller's Literary Companion to Central and Eatern Europe. Like Jacobs' book, out of print but still able to be found secondhand.
Jacobs' guided walks (with simple maps) sometimes cover lots of ground, literally and theoretically, but fill a lack for Budapest, a city which--unlike Prague-lacks many quality guidebooks and suggested itinaries for English-speaking visitors, armchair and real. His reading list's well-chosen, and his mixing of personal and historical narrative proves easy to read and packs a lot of thought into a couple hundred pages.
