Product Description

Describes dangerous places in more than thirty countries around the world, including war zones, crime areas, and centers of terrorist activity, and offers advice about safety, crime, wilderness survival, disease, and political repression, accompanied by firsthand accounts of adventures and experienc

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #180144 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1088 pages

Customer Reviews

The best travel book ever.
Whilst Lonely Planet Guides - and their various knock-offs - tell you the basics of travelling to the places you think you'd like to go to, DP tells you all about the places you really don't want to go to, what to do when you get there, and how to come back in one piece. Written by a motley collection of adventurers and war correspondents (who have a terrifying attrition rate - at least two contributors to previous editions are now dead) DP is not only a guide book to war zones and danger, but also an excellent grounding in the geopolitical realities of how those places got like that, and a guidebook to surviving the travails and difficulties of being a western traveller in the Thrid World.
Where else would you find chapters on how to survive being kidnapped by Columbian drug barons, bribing thrid world police offers, and how to avoid landmines? Even the list of things to take travelling with you differs from teh usual advice - along with the same old/same old tips on travelling light and taking torches and waterproofs, you're advised to take gifts for the people you meet - cigarettes, and a large supply of cheap watches.
As travel advice, it's excellent. As a geopolitical primer, it's the best single book I've ever read. As a book of stories of people travelling to places and meeting people you'd never want to, it's great fun. What reason is there not to own a copy? I'll be sending copies to many of my friends this Christmas.

This book lets you understand whats behind the danger.
I really got into this book. Used to think Burma was dangerous because a creepy dicatorship was in power. Now I know there has been a mish-mash of tribes fighting each other for a very long time. Mind blowing to know in some countries you can be robbed right in the airport. The accounts sometimes show both sides of a fight /revolution. And cities that are free-for-alls in Pakistan, where even the military left after having too many troops sniped. And so the backwater hellhole countries don't feel bad, it reviews dangerous cities too, including Mexico City, New York and Los Angeles, and the cities of Columbia where the murder rate is 10 times that of New York. A friend lent me the book. Couldn't find it at local bookstores. This place has it. Buy it, Share it! good reading since you'd never want to goto many of these places, but you'll understand the news about them.

Dangerous Places is an Accurate Book
As a frequent traveller and retired Army officer, I find that Mr. Pelton and his co-authors are very accurate in their descriptions and observations of the countries and places in this book.

As a traveller to Africa, the Philippines, the Pacific rim, Eastern Europe, Mexico, and South and Central America, I find the book to be accurate in every sense. It also offers valuable geo-political lessons about the world.

To the Amazon web editor: It would be a good thing if Amazon removed the duplicate set of comments by our opinionated, close-minded friend from South Africa. It sounds as if the writer has some agenda against the book, which is too bad. It is a disservice to a great book.