Guide Nouveau
THE new kind of traveller needs a new kind of guide. Everybody now knows that the Parthenon is in Athens and that Maxim's is in Paris, and how many stars each is likely to be awarded by Baedeker or by Michelin. Travel agents' pamph- lets, tourist boards' advertisements, travelogues in colour, and Sunday newspaper experts all take care of that. What we need to mug up on the aeroplane that whisks us to Rome or Ruanda- Urundi is something of the spirit of the place we are off to, a hint of what history and geo- graphy have made of the people we are going to meet. This series of admirably cheap, admirably written, admirably illustrated and admirably pocketable little books is the new kind of guide, exploring Austria, for instance, in terms of The Third Man as well as of The Merry Widow, re- calling Dr. Dollfuss as well as Franz Josef, Freud as well as Mozart, lighting upon the ski-run as well as upon the Ring, and not forgetting, along with the art and the politics, such simple econo- mics as how much you should tip and what it costs to send a postcard. All in fewer than 200 pages and more than a hundred pictures. When I visited Greece a few weeks ago I learned more about the Greece of today, which owes as much to klepht as to Clio, from the little Vista book I read on the aeroplane as from years of conventional education. The books are translated from the French; all are lively, provocative and, on the whole, politically radical—and none the
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