But the book also takes a wildly anti-tourist swing when we get to the cities of Pripyat and Varosha, judging tourists for their desire to gaze at the ruins, as if her entire book wasn’t about cities that have fallen to disease, to war, to pillaging, to fire and tragedy. The book often offers a romanticization of ruins and lack of empathy for the lost city itself, offering only side-notes about struggles in the region, apparently attempting to become apolitical. The information offered is basic-often including strangely chosen sidebars such as one describing what “Golden Ages” are-and often shifts in tone, for example switching between attempting to squash myths and lore about a city and embracing it in order to try and get at the mysteries of its formation or demise. The book itself is pretty, the illustrations beautiful, but the wealth of content peters off slightly there. Aude de Tocqueville suffers from a lack of coherent tone, either problems in writing or in translation, and a couple content issues as well.
I wish I had enjoyed Atlas of Lost Cities: A Travel Guide to Abandoned and Forsaken Destinations more, but unfortunately, it had many problems.
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