Not in the Guidebook: The Whackiest Sites on Earth [ペーパーバック]

This is one of those books you see loitering near the cash register in book shops, which you pick up and casually flick through the pages and buy it (wise folk, of course, note the title then order it cheaper online from Amazon).

I thought it was well worth the money. Now you can see a whole load of quirky shots of the planet that until recently really weren't possible and impressive quality, too. What I particularly liked was the concentration on the man-made world rather than the natural world. Here you can see a Stealth bomber on the runway at Edwards Air Force base, the Prophet Mosque, Medina, Saudi Arabia or hundreds of cars stored on a runway at RAF Bedford in England.

Mixed in with not normally seen photos there are plenty of offbeat sights that clearly would never be appreciated at ground level, like a huge rabbit on Mount Colleto Fava in Italy, designed by a some artists from Vienna or a giant dead cowboy floating of the coast of Australia. I know that's a sort of vague location but all the images have precise co-ordinates on each page so you can find them yourself.

Although the book plugs Google Earth it might be worth checking out the same place on Bing maps. In many cases both sites use the same image source. For instance both have the same scan of the world's tallest man-made structure the KVLY-TV mast at Blanchard, North Dakota shown on page 134. Factoid Time: the mast is 2063 feet high and the structure incorporates an electric lift to allow (brave!) engineers to get to the top for periodic maintenance.

There is a spin-off to using the book because when you check out the sites on Google Earth you'll find that curiosity will get the better of you and something nearby will make you zoom in for a closer look and suddenly another hour has gone!

***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.