An interesting wrap-up of abandonment around the world but nothing new in the selection. The usual favorites are here, for example: Henry Ford's Fordlandia in Brazil, the jet boneyards in Arizona, Bulgaria's Buzludzha monument and Japan's Hashima island. Everything in the book is available on your favorite search engine (and Wikipedia) with tons of photos.
The book, though has some serious editorial flaws. The main one is the whole page map for every place; it's just a waste of space because on the left-hand page facing the map is a sort of large thumbnail of a globe with a red dot locating the place. Also on the page are the geographical coordinates, again locating the place. It's unfortunate also that there are too few photos. The crazy housing estate Burj Al Babasin in Turkey, has a page photo and a small one on its opening page. If the large whole map wasn't there, it could be used for photos.
The one advantage this book has over the usual abandonement titles is that Oliver Smith has written a reasonable amount of background to each place. Most other books are more photographic than text driven. The other advantage is that this book can be picked up quite cheaply.
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