Places: A Travel Companion for Music and Art Lovers

Places stylishly mixes travel observations, historical essays and remembered conversations. I read it nearly without stopping and still wished that there were five of six hundred pages to go. So be warned: Places is so good that it won't last a quiet weekend, let alone a two-week family holiday at the beach. Of course, you could always bring along Stravinsky: Chrinicle of a Friendship, Current Convictions, The Moment of Existence or any of Craft's other half dozen or so books. If you like his meticulous and well-stocked mind as much as I do, you'll eventually want to read everything he's written.Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World (e-mail address [email protected])

A good read to be sure, and it will certainly make you want to see more of the world. I dusted off my passport before making it halfway through the book. However, I also had to dust off my trusty unabridged dictionary. Craft's diction is superb, but I found plenty of occasions to have to turn to the dictionary for words that have fallen from the common vernacular. Is it worth reading? Absolutely, his travels are only heightened by the research he has put in on the locales discussed in the book. You may just read through the entire thing in a sitting, only pausing to look up those delightful (if rarely used) words.