Atlas Obscura is the book to inspire wanderlust (and wonderlust). Beautifully bound in red with gold foil, this compellingly written, scrupulously researched compendium is a must for the adventurous and curious. Filled with over 700 entries from around the world and embellished with rich colour illustrations, charts, photographs and maps, Atlas Obscura is every bit as desirable as the places it describes.  

This is the ultimate compilation of the world’s best hidden marvels, carefully curated, every page of Atlas Obscura: An Explorers Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders paints a rich panorama of the marvellously strange world in which we all live.

Entries include:

â–ª A fire that’s been burning in the desert for 40 years

â–ª A temple to the souls of insects that died for science

â–ª A museum dedicated to art made from human hair

â–ª Self-mummifying monks of Japan

â–ª Pablo Escobar’s Hippos

â–ª A bust of Lenin in Antarctica.  

Every entry includes a detailed description and GPS coordinate; but some hidden wonders are so out of the way, so treacherously situated, or located so deep beneath the surface, that few of even the most intrepid explorers will ever be able to visit. Readers will love to stumble across somewhere that they discovered and marvelled at, or explore a nearby hidden gem they never knew existed.  

Just one of the strange inclusions - read the book and find out where it is!

Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders, by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras & Ella Morton, Workman Publishing, 2016, hardcover, fully illustrated,  A$69.99

More about the book....

About the Authors 

Joshua Foer is the author of the instant bestseller ‘Moonwalking with Einstein’ about his yearlong quest to improve his memory under the tutelage of top ‘mental athletes.’ For further information about this former United States Memory Champion search his TED talk ‘Feats of memory anyone can do.’ 

Dylan Thuras’ passion for exploration and the discovery of the unusual began when as a teenager he explored nearby abandoned buildings. After a year spent in Eastern Europe he now lives in New York. Among his favourite finds included in Atlas Obscura is Skeleton Lake in Uttarakhand, India. Discovered in the 1940s, but dating back to the year 850, over 200 skeletons surround this hard-to-reach lake.  

Ella Morton spent four years researching and compiling to create Atlas Obscura. Raised in Australia and now based in New York, Ella is a non-fiction writer specialising in the strange and wondrous.