Customer Reviews

This should be a 'Five', but no photographs/illustrations .... - By: E. A. Williams, 20 Dec 2008
I bought this book as an xmas present for my nephew who is a Building Surveyor. My job involves historical buildings & (rather than buy him SOCKS!), I wanted to buy something to expand his world from simply seeing buildings around us, to realising (once built) they acquire a history from links with the people who use them.

I read all the Customer reviews, used the 'Look Inside' function, I even read the excerptin detail (which looked excellent). My concern was did the book have photographs/illustrations, because having to imagine buildings you are reading about wouldn't be good.

I firstly reviewed the paperback version (at £9+) & someone mentioned the pictures 'were small': I thought this would be ok because it was also intended as a 'walking' book & would otherwise have to be a huge book. However, because the book was a gift, I thought the hardcover version would therefore be a better version. THERE ARE NO PHOTOGRAPHS OR ILLUSTRATIONS IN IT AT ALL!

This is SUCH a shame, because the textin the book is brilliant - as an example: "Balloon Street:in May 1785, James Sadler, an Oxford man made three tripsin a balloon from the garden of the Manchester Arms pub, a site now covered by Balloon Street, to the amazement of Mancunians. Sadler made his first ascent two years after the Montgolfier brothers had sent up a balloonin Paris containing a sheep, cockeral & a duck". I could continue quoting this paragraph because the text is SO interesting, but I'd probably get to the end of the book before I stopped - the whole book is like this.

MR GLINERT: your publishers are letting you down SO badly. This should be an amazing book: the text is absolutely WONDERFUL & an inspiring introduction to history for people who otherwise probably wouldn't be interested. Your book should be a 'coffee table' edition illustrated with beautiful photographic views of the sites/buildings you discussin Manchester. Even the paperback version should have thumbnail views if it doesn't already - without photographs, I'm not sure how people could easily relate to the city on the 'walking tour'. This is a tragedy, because your text so interesting & inspiring, & so well written.

As for my xmas gift, my husband suggested sending it back to Amazon. I love the text so much I'm still going to give it to my nephew, but with an accompanying bottle of wine (or socks!) along with an apology & full explanation of what my gift intended to achieve. I hope my nephews imagination will enable him to make the links between Manchester's buildings & Mr Glinert's wonderful text. As for Penguin publishers, my message is 'get your act together': you have the potential for a beautiful book here which should be one of (if not the) leading books on Manchester's history because it is readable & interesting to anyone.

'Someone!': please produce the version of this book that Mr Glinert's text deserves. And if that happens Mr Glinert, please find a way to let me know ... because I'd buy it :o)