Around the World in 80 Years

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If you love travel and have a fetish for lists, then rejoice: Patricia Schultz's new book, 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, should keep you happily occupied for the rest of your natural term. It's a work as provocative as it is encyclopedic—after all, how do you decide which destinations make the cut? Not everyone is going to agree with Schultz's choices, and the author is aware of the quagmire she's got herself into. "Why give the Pork Pit in Montego Bay the same weight as Paris' legendary Taillevent?" she asks, referring to two well-known but very different restaurants. The answer is that the world would ultimately be a much less delectable dish if it were only composed of truffles.

Only a die-hard travel writer (which Schultz is, and one who claims descent from Mark Twain at that) could imagine that visiting all of these disparate places is remotely achievable. Nonetheless, just the notion alone is salivating—even if you will never ride an elephant in Botswana's Okavango Delta, the world's largest inland delta, or saunter languidly past the ruins of the ancient Guatemalan city of Antigua ("Spain's capital of all of middle America, until the epic earthquake of 1773," according to the book).

The guide's page-long entries each include a lively explanation as to why you would want to go, basic logistics information, prices and hotel phone numbers, making it both an easy read and an insightful travel primer. For the special-interest explorer, the index also sorts destinations into categories such as museums, adventure, food and the ancient world.

One word of warning, however: with everything from the Tuscan hills to Ipanema beach listed in loving detail, reading 1,000 Places to See Before You Die is not going to be easy if you're deskbound—before you open it, ensure your passport and credit card are in working order.