Atlas Obscura

I thought I had seen most of the interesting bits of the world. "Atlas Obscura" showed me that I was wrong.It's the kind of book that makes you want to pack in your workaday life and head out to places you'd never have dreamed of going, to see things you could not even have imagined. A joy to read and to reread. NEIL GAIMAN, author of "Sandman "and "American Gods" "Atlas Obscura" is a joyful antidote to the creeping suspicion that travel these days is little more than a homogenized corporate shopping opportunity."Here are hundreds of surprising, perplexing, mind-blowing, inspiring reasons to travel a day longer and farther off the path... Bestest travel guide ever. MARY ROACH, author of "Stiff "and "Gulp" "Atlas Obscura" may be the only thing that can still inspire me to leave my apartment... This resource is essential for exploring the world and engaging adventure with wit and style (often from the comfort of my bed). LENA DUNHAM, creator of "Girls "and author of "Not That Kind of Girl" My favorite travel guide! Never start a trip without knowing where a haunted hotel or a mouth of hell is! GUILLERMO DEL TORO, filmmaker, "Pan s Labyrinth" What a strange and wonderful book! It is as curious and surprising as Saddam Hussein s very own Blood Qur an written in his own blood which I would never have known about had I not read the amazing "Atlas Obscura." JON RONSON, author of "So You ve Been Publicly Shamed" This book is as curious and enthralling as the world it covers. Each page reveals some hidden realm a realm that is frightening, or funny, or magical, or simply mad, but that always leaves the reader in wonder. DAVID GRANN, author of "The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon" Your peregrine falcon needs a small talon trim? Go straight to the Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital... Be grateful when visiting the Karni Mata Rat Temple if one of the 20,000 venerated rodents runs across your bare foot it is considered good luck... You won t be able to enter the 20-years-in-the-making and still abandoned tallest hotel in the world. It does not matter. Wherever you look around Pyongyang, North Korea, the 105-story skyscraper silently towers over all... Life is short. Our planet is filled with curiosities and marvels ... and this wondrous book is your guide! PHILIPPE PETIT, high-wire artist and explorer A travel guide for the most adventurous of tourists ... a wonderful browse [for] armchair travelers who enjoyed Brandon Stanton s "Humans of New York" and Frank Warren s" PostSecret." "Library Journal" "

Joshua Foer is the cofounder, chairman, and editor at large of Atlas Obscura. He is also the author of Moonwalking with Einstein, an international bestseller published in 33 languages, and a forthcoming book about his travels with pygmies in the Congo. Co-creator of Sukkah City, one of the largest design competitions of the last 20 years, Foer was named one of ten people who could change the world by the New Statesman. Ella Morton is an Australian-raised, New York-based non-fiction writer specialising in the strange and wondrous. She has written for Slate, Conde Nast Traveler, and CNET. As the host of travel show Rocketboom NYC, she uncovered New York's underground oddities and interviewed Cookie Monster and Elmo on the set of Sesame Street. Dylan Thuras is the cofounder and creative director of Atlas Obscura.