Foreign-holdings Books

First of all, Nagorno Karabakh is a territory of Azerbaijan and listing it as territory of Armenia is totally inappropriate. Armenia itself as well as any country in the World never admitted that above referenced area belongs to republic of Armenia.
What to expect from the book if its author don't even know geography and ignores all the ethical rules. This book is a total misrepresentation of facts.

I agree with the other reviewer - it's a good effort and fairly well written. My main issues with this book are 1) that the photographs are incredibly bleak. If I had not visited Armenia last year, I definitely would not have based on the pictures. 2) The Nagorno Karabagh section was very light. It basically seemed like an after thought that was tacked on the last minute.

This the first guidebook by a major publisher to this wonderful country. The book has a couple of quirks but makes up for it
with lots of detail and a real passion for the country.
It's a huge leap forward from the 'Georgia with Armenia' book previously published by Bradt. There are maps for each marz (province) and a smattering of city maps - Yerevan, Gyumri and Ejmiatsin. My main quibbles is that the selection of restaurants in Yerevan isn't as good as it could have been, and that the author has a clear fascination for trains which may not be shared by all readers. For example, most of the space devoted to Kapan, one of the nicer regional cities, refers to the trains and carriages stranded there. Otherwise, it's well written and obviously very thoroughly researched. The only place I can see which was missed is the Amaras monastery in Karabakh.

I recently moved to Armenia and purchased this book right before leaving the USA. My interest was mainly to use it to find neat places to go in the countryside, and this book definitely fills that purpose. We live in Yerevan, the capital, which is fairly well documented by the book.
Our second weekend in the country we decided to travel up one of the nearby mountains - wife and three young children - to go sledding in April - and not speaking ANY Armenian yet. All we had to go on was the region map on page 106 and the narative description on the authors travels. We made it to our destination (and two meter deep snow) easily.
Just this past weekend we used the book again to visit an old (1000AD) castle ruins and some monestaries hidden in the forests of the Lori region. The narative in the book was once again precise in all details - our only issue was when we encountered a newly paved road that was described as being in poor condition in the book (time has passed since the writting).
I specially commend the book for those interested in getting out and around to the more remote areas.
The book would be considerably better with maps of every town that the main roads turn in and color pictures mixed in with the text (right now the pictures are all at the center of the book). Yerevan itself is changing rapidly and may not be quite as described, but the countryside is almost identical to when the author visited.

This is a good book to have if you are visiting Armenia for the first time, so, you get a sense of what everything is and where to go. Compared to some guides about Europe, it lacks the picture/entertaining part. Usually, people see pictures, are attracted to what they see, and therefore decide to visit that particular location. However, lack of pictures only gives history and people may miss out on some great location, city, monument or achitecture because they may not feel moved by only its history. Overall a good book to have, it can be better though.

Although it is a good book for basics, it is not as intensive as hoped. I would recomend for someone starting out, but not someone that wants it for more then just coversational words, ie "Hi, how are you"

I have been working on a Tongan grammar guide and task sheet for organizational purposes. I needed a good dictionary to translate some English words. This dictionary has been worthless. As a Tongan, it did not meet any of my expectations. For instance, it did not have translations for the following words: allergy, curious, alcohol, etc. Granted that all the words in the world cannot be translated, but the ones that I needed desperately were not found in the book. I severely regret buying this book for $27.00. I'm planning on posting this on ebay immediately. I was using another dictionary that is out of print. It is the volume of work by Churchward. For me, it has been the best work on the Tongan language. When using it, I never had a problem finding a word. I regret recommending this dictionary to my students and hope no one else burdens themselves with this poorly researched book.

I purchased this book while in the Tonga Islands. As an American married to a Tongan who is bi-lingual, this book is the most comprehensive I have seen. My son and I are always looking up words, and have never had a word we have not been able to find. It is extremely helpful to us, and also my husband, who has lived in the U.S. for 20+ years - sometimes he forgets his own language.