Today is International Tourist Guide Day. I love to travel, even if a lot of it is by armchair. But when I do get out, my go-to guide is DK Eyewitness Travel Guidebooks. No offence to other highly qualified books, but I just am comfortable with their style of history and exploring. I always go there first. Here is a stands-worth with some of them that I have used, or are going to use.
That is not to say that I don’t collect guide books. I do. The following shows different companies of guide books that I own. A few are rather rare, and worth mentioning: “DeAlba’s Practical Guide to Mexico”, published 1945; “Murray’s Hand-book the Riviera” published 1892; “Bischoff’s America Abroad-A guide for American Tourists in Europe”, published 1885. All of these books have marvelous fold-out maps attached to the book. I also have a nice selection of Baedeker guide books.
I am quite fond of Clara E. Laughlin’s guide books, and own about eight. On a recent trip to Rome, I brought her book on Italy, and used it several times for exploration of the Roman Forum and surrounding areas. It was interesting studying an area over 2000 years old, with a guidebook that was over 100 years old. She had timeless views on what we were seeing, “while at the colosseum, the taxi drivers could easily have been misplaced chariot drivers exiting the nearby Circus Maximus.” I found the resemblance of reckless driving to be uncanny-and still true today.
You may notice that a lot of these travel guides are red. It reminds me that today is also National Red Book Day. Not for celebrating tourist guide books, but rather for the anniversary of publishing another guide book of sorts ‘The Communist Manifesto’ by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Red Books Day celebrates leftist’s books, their authors, and the causes they proscribe (or prescribe, based on ideology).
I have “Capital and Other Writings” by Karl Marx, 1959. Marx’s writings about class struggles, and how Capitalism will bring itself down, are an interesting read. And then…I think of the quote often affiliated to Winston Churchill:
“If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.”
Or was it John Adams, when he said:
“A boy of fifteen who is not a democrat is good for nothing, and he is no better who is a democrat at twenty.”
But then, in order to also remember International Tourist Guide Day today, I would rather end this day with a quote by Mark Twain:
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
Keep reading. And when going to France, don’t forget to pack your bag-ette.
Librarytomes 