Summit of Treasures: Buddhist Cave Sculpture of Dazu, China

Rating:
Summary: Great place - bad pictures!!!
Review: Dazu is a really great place. It is as stunning as Yungang caves in Shanxi and much more impressive than the famous Mogao caves in the Gansu province. And this makes probably just about every book on the place worthwhile. BUT half of the photographs in this book are so bad it is unbelievable. True, those caves tend to be dark and there is little room for you to step back when taking a picture etc... but one would assume that somebody who wants to publish a book about the place could do better than take average tourist-quality (and sometimes worse) pictures. Unfortunately, this seems to be the only book on the topic out there. So there is really no choice for you if you are interested in Dazu. The accompanying text is very detailed and seems very good but, let's face it, most of us don't get books of this type primarily because of the text - it is the photographs that really matter. In sum, think twice before you get this book.