«Alastair Bonnett describes the book as a journey, «to the ends of the earth and the other side of the street, as far as we need to go to get away from the familiar and the routine». But this journey is an odd one, not least because it seems to involve very little actual travelling. Whether or not Bonnett has been to the places he describes is often unclear, but many of the book’s voices come from internet discussion boards, journalists’ accounts and official reports, while every chapter that describes a static place comes with a set of Google Earth co-ordinates. The book comes to read in large part as the log of journeys undertaken in front of a screen: a work of armchair geography.»
